Scout — the daily attention gauntlet
How sharp is your eye? Scout is a free browser attention game: five quick rounds, the same for everyone each day, each one a different way of looking — searching, scanning, catching change, tracking motion. No signup — a full daily takes about a minute.
The five rounds
| ODD | A grid of identical shapes — except one is rotated slightly differently from all the rest. Tap it. Scored on how fast you find it — close counts on the clock, and wrong taps cost points, so look before you leap. |
| TRAIL | Numbers scattered across the field. Tap them in order — 1, 2, 3… — as fast as your eye can plan the route. The clock runs on the whole trail; a wrong tap costs a little, hesitation costs more. |
| FLICK | A scene of shapes flickers — on, off, on, off — and one item is missing from every second frame. Tap the thing that blinks. The classic change-blindness test: you can stare straight at it and not see it, until suddenly you do. |
| SHADOW | A crowd of identical dots drifts around. One flashes gold — then goes ordinary again. Keep your eye locked on it while everything drifts, and when all the dots vanish, tap where yours ended up. Scored by distance — close counts. |
| SWEEP | A field of rotated L shapes hiding exactly one T. Find it. There's no shortcut — no color pop, no size cue — just an honest visual sweep, row by row or spiral, your call. |
Scoring
Search rounds score your speed from 0 to 100 — a fast find is green, a slow one earns partial credit, and each wrong tap costs points. The tracking round scores distance — dead-on is 100, close still counts. Your daily result is the average of the five rounds, plus a five-square trail (🟩 sharp · 🟨 close · 🟥 missed it) you can copy and send as a challenge — the link carries your score, so a friend who opens it is dared to out-spot you. Come back tomorrow for a fresh gauntlet and build a daily streak — beat yesterday's score to sharpen it, and if you miss a day your personal best is saved and waiting. The menu shows your last seven days as a chain of squares — each finished gauntlet fills one, and today's pulses until you play. After you finish, the results screen shows today's rivals — how many players ran the gauntlet in the last 24 hours, the best score among them, and where yours ranks. Rivals are always anonymous: a count and a score, never names or accounts.
Controls
| Answer | Tap (mouse or finger). In ODD, FLICK and SWEEP you tap the target itself; in TRAIL you tap the numbers in order; in SHADOW you tap where your dot ended up, fine-drag it, then LOCK IN (desktop: arrow keys fine-tune, ENTER locks). |
| Start a round | Each round waits for you — the clock only starts when you tap START. Nothing is sprung on you mid-read. |
| Wrong taps | A red ring shows every miss. Three wrong taps on a search round ends it — but Scout then shows you where the target was, so you learn the trick for tomorrow. |
Modes
Daily gauntlet: 5 seeded rounds — grids, trails, scenes and drifts identical for every player worldwide that day. One attempt each. Mid-gauntlet progress is saved if you get interrupted.
Practice — the attention trainer: endless rounds, your way. Pick all five mixed or drill a single skill — odd, trail, flick, shadow or sweep. Every drill climbs a 12-level difficulty ladder: score green and the next round gets harder — bigger grids, subtler rotations, busier scenes, more dots to track — score red and it steps back down. Your current and best level per skill live in the picker: how high can you climb? Scout also keeps a lifetime accuracy average per skill (from both daily and practice rounds, stored only in your browser), so the picker doubles as your attention profile: it shows your average and level for each skill and flags your weakest round from today's gauntlet. Every round you finish — daily or practice — also earns XP equal to its score: climb a 12-rank ladder from drowsy through searchlight and night watch up to all-seeing. Your rank only ever goes up, and it lives in your browser — no account needed.
Tips
- Odd: don't inspect shape by shape — soften your gaze and let the whole grid blur. The odd one itches.
- Trail: spend the first second finding 1, 2 AND 3 — a planned route beats a fast finger.
- Flick: pick a quadrant and hold it through two flickers, then move on. Watching the whole scene at once shows you nothing.
- Shadow: don't chase your dot with your eyes wide — narrow onto it and let the others become fog. If you blink it away, follow the dot most likely to be it and commit.
- Sweep: be boring. Row by row, left to right — a disciplined sweep beats darting around, every time.
Scout is a game, not an attention test — it measures practice and patience, and every round rewards a calmer, more deliberate look.
FAQ
Is it free? Do I need an account? Free, no account, no install needed. It runs in any modern browser, on phones and school Chromebooks alike. If you'd like the daily one tap away, you can optionally add Scout to your home screen — once you're on a 2-day streak, an "add to home screen" button appears after your daily on supported browsers. No download, no store, it's the same game in an app-shaped wrapper.
Is it the same puzzle for everyone? Yes — the daily gauntlet is seeded by the date, so your 73 and your friend's 88 came from identical grids and drifts.
Does it work in my language? Practically yes — the rounds are shapes, numbers and dots, not words.
Who made this? Scout is an original game by Yuki Andersen. More free games: Gauge, Glimpse, Tempo, Prism, Keel, Wordpull, Floe, Ballast, Well Duel, Well Putt, Wellspring.
