Slide Tap Number

Why add movement to a Schulte table

A Schulte table is a grid of scrambled numbers that you find in order from 1, long used as practice for scanning with your eyes and spreading your attention. The catch with a fixed table is that after a few rounds you start to remember roughly where things are.

In Slide Tap Number, numbers you haven't tapped yet keep swapping places with a neighboring cell at a steady rhythm. Remembered positions stop being reliable, so every round you actually have to look.

The swap rules

The movement is random, but bounded so you can follow it:

• Only two cells that touch side by side or top to bottom swap, and only if neither number has been tapped yet
• Each swap moves a number by exactly one cell — nothing teleports across the board
• Tapped numbers never move again, so the board calms down as you progress
• Each move is shown as a slide of about 0.45 seconds, timed to finish before the next swap begins

Three difficulty levels

Grid size, swap tempo and the number of simultaneous swaps all step up together. Hard's 5×5 is the size of a classic Schulte table.

• Easy: 3×3 (9 numbers), one pair every 1.0 second
• Normal: 4×4 (16 numbers), one pair every 0.8 seconds
• Hard: 5×5 (25 numbers), two pairs at once every 0.7 seconds

Strategy that follows from the rules

Since every swap moves a number by just one cell, a number you've spotted is either where you saw it or right next to it, even if you lose track. While hunting for the next number, keep the one after it in the corner of your eye, and you'll spend less time rescanning the whole board.

On Hard, two pairs move every 0.7 seconds, so looking away for two or three seconds can let a number wander several cells. On the other hand, fewer numbers move near the end, so the last few get easier to find.

Age guide and how the time is counted

A child who knows the order of 1 to 9 can play Easy, and hunting for the next number is itself counting practice. Normal and above are a focused time attack for school-age kids through adults.

Each wrong tap adds 2 seconds to your time. The game doesn't stop, so panicked mashing inflates your time fast. Only your best time per difficulty is saved, in this device's browser, and it isn't sent anywhere.