pistachio

how good are your senses, really?

short tests for your reflexes, your eye for color, your sense of time, your memory and your steadiness. most take under a minute. at the end you get a shape — the things you're good at, and the things you're not.

every test is a real paradigm from the psychophysics literature, run properly: randomized intervals so you can't game the timing, frame-accurate stimulus onset, and comparisons segmented by screen refresh rate so a faster phone doesn't flatter you. where the norms are thin, it says so instead of inventing a percentile.

get it on the app store

iphone · free · no account needed

or play three of them right here, with nothing installed.

found something wrong? tell me about it.

better with someone else

the whole thing is built to be argued about. play against someone standing next to you, or someone three time zones away — same test, same conditions, one result with both names on it.

pass the phone

you play, hand it over, they play. the second score stays hidden until you've both finished, so nobody is aiming at a number.

or send it

send a link instead. they open it in whatever browser they have — no app, no account — and play the same test right there. your score isn't in the link and they can't read it until they've played one of their own. then they can send one back the same way.

three of them run in a browser

no app, no account, nothing to install. they're the three that don't need to know exactly when a pixel lit or exactly when your finger landed — which is the one thing a browser can't tell you, and the reason the rest are on the phone.

there's a daily too — one test, the same one for everybody, and a grid you can send when you're done. most days it's one of the others, and it says so.

a few of them

most need nothing but the phone. a couple ask you to stand up.

a hand tapping two pads on a phone
the drummer's curse

two plates, one finger, ten seconds. three bursts a hand, because the point is watching you tire.

speed
a person sitting, listening closely to a phone
the odd note

three tones, two identical. it gets harder every time you're right, until it finds the smallest difference you can hear.

sound
a person holding a phone up in front of them
the plumb line

tilt the phone, then set a line straight up and down in the room. the screen edge and the frame around it are both lying to you.

space
a hand holding a phone very still
the steady hand

hold it out and keep it still. everybody's hand shakes at eight to twelve times a second — this measures yours.

balance
a person standing on one leg, phone held against their chest
the tightrope

stand on one leg, phone against your chest. it reads the sway you can't feel, and knows when your other foot touches down.

balance

scroll for more →

and the rest

speedthe lightning handthe quick drawthe drummer's curse
sightthe coloristthe flash count
soundthe tuning forkthe odd notethe hiccup
spacethe arrowheadsthe snowflakethe plumb linethe surveyor
timethe inner clockthe metronome
mindthe memory palacethe fair share
balancethe tightropethe steady hand
bodythe ticker

the shape you end up with

71 speed sight sound space time mind balance body

every test scores in the same currency, so a color score and a reaction time can sit on one chart without pretending to be the same measurement. the raw measurement is always there underneath — milliseconds, cents, a match out of ten.

it fades where you haven't played in a while, and a group you've never tried is a dashed spoke rather than a low score — those are different facts, and drawing them the same way would be a lie about you.

and everyone else

a board for the last seven days, which you can decline or leave, one entry per person per test. it ranks the measurement rather than the score, so there is nothing to forge but the measurement — and that's bounded by what a body can do.

the lightning hand · last 7 days 4 players
1ada198 ms
2niamh214 ms
3you221 ms
4sam236 ms

you're never shown a position without the size of the field it was won against — a board of four says so. joining publishes your name, your emblem and one number, and leaving takes all of it down again.

pistachio is not a medical device. nothing it measures diagnoses anything, and a low score is not a symptom. if something here worries you, talk to a doctor rather than to a phone.