Free visual tracking game — instant play, no signup, no download
Cup Shuffle is the shell game: a ball goes under one cup, the cups swap positions rapidly, and you say where the ball ended up. There is no trick and no sleight of hand — the ball really is where the animation says it is. The only difficulty is keeping your eye on one moving object while identical objects cross its path.
Watch the ball being placed under one cup.
The cups shuffle — follow the one holding the ball.
When the shuffling stops, click the cup you tracked.
The cup lifts to show whether you were right.
Rounds add more cups and faster swaps.
Level 1 uses three cups and five swaps. Each level adds a swap (up to 14) and speeds the swaps up; every third level adds a cup, up to six.
Finding the ball scores 10 points times the level, so later levels are worth more. A wrong cup costs one of your three lives and replays the level. Your best score is saved in this browser.
Sustained visual tracking of a single object through occlusion and crossing. It is a narrow skill, but it is the one that fails when a moving thing passes behind another and you lose it. More tracking games to try next: Motion Detector and Sound Direction. Every game in this family is on the visual tracking games page.
Following the cup with the ball is a single-target version of multiple object tracking, a task introduced by Zenon Pylyshyn and Ron Storm in 1988. Their experiments showed people can track about four identical moving objects at once using attention alone.
Tracking one object is easy until the objects move fast or swap often; errors come when two cups cross and attention briefly loses which is which. Keeping your eyes on the target cup rather than the whole table is the reliable strategy.
Watch the cup, not the gap. Tracking the empty space between cups is how people lose the ball.
Do not blink during a swap. A blink at the wrong moment loses the round outright.
Use peripheral vision for the other cups so your focus never leaves the target.
If you genuinely lose it, pick the cup that moved least. Fast swaps more often involve the outer two.
No. The ball stays under the cup it started in for the whole animation. There is no hidden switch.
Three is comfortable for nearly everyone; the difficulty climbs steeply at four and five.
It targets the same tracking that lets you keep one player in view in a crowded sports field. That is about the extent of it.
Slow, long crossings give your attention more chances to drift. Very fast swaps are sometimes easier because they are over before you can be distracted.