Tap the numbers in order after they vanish — the task where young chimpanzees beat human adults
The Chimp Test shows numbers scattered across the screen, hides them the moment you touch the first one, and asks you to tap the rest in ascending order from memory. It is named after a well-known set of experiments at Kyoto University in which young chimpanzees outperformed human adults on a task of this shape. Whether or not you beat a chimp, the test finds your positional span in about ninety seconds.
Numbers appear scattered across the grid.
Take a moment to absorb where each one is.
Tap 1 — every other number hides immediately.
Tap the rest in ascending order from memory.
One mistake ends the round; clearing it adds another number.
Numbers appear in random cells of a 6 × 5 grid, starting with four. The moment you tap 1, the rest are hidden and you must tap them in order from memory.
Clear a level and the next has one more number. One wrong tap ends the run; your best level is saved in this browser.
Simultaneous spatial memory — capturing a whole layout in one glance rather than learning it step by step. It is a different capacity from sequence memory and it is the one the chimpanzee studies probed. Another memory game to try next: N-Color Back. How the test works and what a good score looks like is in the chimp test explained.
The chimp test comes from a 2007 study at Kyoto University in which young chimpanzees, trained on touch screens, remembered the positions of briefly flashed numerals better than university students. Ayumu, the best-known chimp, could do it with numbers visible for a fraction of a second.
The comparison has been debated. Later studies found that humans given practice closed much of the gap, and argued the original humans had far less training than the chimps. What the task genuinely measures is rapid spatial memory for a set of positions — a skill that improves quickly with practice.
Do not read the numbers one by one. Let your eyes go soft and take the whole field in at once.
Lock the positions of 1 through 4 hard. Most runs end in the first four taps, not the last.
Group nearby numbers into shapes. Three consecutive numbers forming a triangle is one memory.
Tap at a steady rhythm. Rushing the early taps is the single most common cause of a wasted round.
Young chimps in the Kyoto University studies outperformed human adults at the very short display durations used there. It is a real result about a very specific task, not a general claim about intelligence.
Compare against your own previous runs. Published human numbers vary so much with display time and grid size that quoting one would be misleading.
Deliberate, verbal effort interferes with the whole-field capture this task needs. Relaxed glancing genuinely scores higher.
No. Digit span is a sequence you hear or read; this is a layout you see. Many people are strong at one and ordinary at the other.