Spot the Difference
A game of memory as much as of eyes. Everybody presses Ready, a picture appears for thirty seconds, then it goes and a second picture takes its place with five things changed. You have thirty seconds to tap what changed, and the site judges every tap, so it works against the bot and against a friend across the world alike.
The round
- Everybody at the table presses Ready. The moment the last player does, the first picture appears for thirty seconds. Memorise it.
- Then the first picture goes, and the second picture appears alone. Five things in it are different from the first. You have thirty seconds to tap them.
- The pictures are drawn fresh from the game's seed every time, from a stock of forty-two things in three kinds of scene, so no two matches share a picture and nobody has seen yours before.
- Every player is looking at the same two pictures on the same clock. What the others have found is shown as a count while the picture is live, never where.
The hunt
- A tap on the second picture inside one of the five changed places finds it, and a ring marks it. A tap you have already found is simply repeated.
- A tap anywhere else is a miss, and three misses end your hunt on that picture with what you have found so far.
- After a miss the picture is locked for two seconds and taps are refused until it opens again, so guessing everywhere costs time as well as misses.
- A hunt faster than any honest one, all five found within a few seconds of the picture appearing, is disqualified: nobody finds them that fast by looking.
How a match ends
- A match is three pictures, each with its own Ready and its own thirty seconds to memorise and thirty to hunt.
- After every picture the differences are shown to everybody, with who found which.
- The player who found the most over the three pictures wins; on the same number, the one who took less time hunting. Equal on both shares the place.
- Pressing Ready has the move deadline you chose when the table was made; a player who never presses it, or who resigns, is out of the match.
Worth knowing before you start
- Every tap is timed by the site when it arrives, not by your phone, so a slow connection costs you time and nothing can be gained by changing the clock on your side.
- Two to four players at a table. The bot fills the empty seats of an open table and plays at one of three strengths, drawn per game from the seed.
- Against the bot you can ask for a hint, which rings one of the changed places you have not found yet.
- The seed is published when the match ends, so anybody can redraw the pictures and check every tap.
The pictures are drawn by the site from the seed rather than photographed, which is why they can be checked and why no two matches look the same. Nothing here is played for money, and the site takes none.
Spot the Difference terms
- a difference
- one of the five places in the second picture that changed: a colour, a thing gone or added, turned round, bigger or smaller, moved, or counted differently
- a miss
- a tap outside every changed place; three end your hunt on that picture
- the lockout
- the two seconds after a miss during which taps on the picture are refused
- the reveal
- the showing of all five differences to everybody once the picture is over