Target Count

Target Count asks a simple question under an unhelpful clock: how many of this symbol are on the board? The difficulty is not the arithmetic. It is holding a running total while your eyes keep landing on things that are almost, but not quite, what you are counting.

How to play Target Count

Each round opens with a target, such as a solid star, and a board of scattered symbols. Some are the target. Some are its lookalike, which differs by one feature: the outline star beside the solid one. The rest are unrelated symbols. Count every exact copy of the target while the board is visible.

After six or seven seconds the board is covered. You then have five more seconds to finish typing your count and press Enter. You can type at any point, including while the board is still showing, and pressing Enter early ends the round straight away. After each round the board is shown again with every target ringed, so you can see exactly what you counted and what you missed.

The lookalike pairs

There are eleven symbols, and each one has a partner that differs in exactly one way. On Standard and Hard, the lookalikes of the current target make up a fixed share of the other symbols on the board, so they are always present and always the thing most likely to inflate your total.

• Solid star and outline starFill
• Solid circle and ringFill
• Plus sign and crossTurned 45°
• Square and diamondTurned 45°
• Upward and downward triangleTurned 180°
• Check mark and crossOne stroke

The cross has two partners, the plus sign and the check mark, so a board where you are counting crosses can carry both. Symbols are tilted by up to ten degrees for a scattered look, which never brings a plus sign close to a cross or a square close to a diamond.

Why a few seconds is not quite enough

Very small groups can be taken in at a glance. In 1949 Kaufman, Lord, Reese and Volkmann reported in The American Journal of Psychology that very small sets of dots were judged quickly and confidently, and coined the word subitizing for it; as the sets grew, judgements became slower and less accurate. Every Target Count board holds at least four targets and usually far more, mixed in with distractors, so the answer is never visible at a glance. You have to count, and the clock makes counting one symbol at a time a tight fit.

That is why the method matters more than raw speed. A player who sweeps the board in a fixed order and counts in small groups usually finishes in time. A player who darts towards whatever catches the eye usually counts some symbols twice and misses others.

A counting method that holds up

1. Name the difference before you count. Say “solid, not outline” or “points up” to yourself as the board appears. A target you have described is far easier to separate from its lookalike than one you only recognise.
2. Sweep in bands. Split the board into two or three horizontal strips and cover each from left to right. Every symbol belongs to one strip, so nothing is visited twice.
3. Count in twos and threes. Take small clusters at a glance rather than touching every symbol individually. Small groups stay within the range you can read without counting.
4. Never restart. If you lose your place near the end, finish the sweep and estimate the remainder. A total one away still earns half credit; a restart rarely finishes in time.
5. Type as soon as you are sure. Entering the count before the cover ends the round there, and your pace is measured to the moment you press Enter.

What the difficulty levels change

Difficulty changes what is on the board, not just the clock. Easy has no lookalikes at all: the other symbols are clearly different, so the task is pure counting. Standard makes 40% of the other symbols lookalikes of the target. Hard makes 65% of them lookalikes, adds a third unrelated symbol type, and puts up to eighteen targets on a board of up to thirty-eight symbols.

Every level gives five seconds after the cover to finish typing. The target symbol never repeats from one board to the next, and consecutive boards always differ in target count by at least two, so a total cannot be carried over from the previous round.

How the Target Count score works

Count accuracy supplies 88% of the score and pace supplies 12%. An exact count earns full credit for that board, a count one away earns half, and anything further away earns nothing. A board with no count entered also earns nothing. Pace is your average time from the board appearing to pressing Enter, measured against a target of 4.5 seconds on Easy, 5.5 on Standard and 6.5 on Hard.

Pace is withheld from guessing. Typing the same middle-of-the-range number on every board would earn about 29% accuracy on Easy, 25% on Standard and 22% on Hard, because it is sometimes exact and sometimes one away. The pace share shrinks to nothing at that level, so a fast blind guess scores in the low twenties however quickly it is typed. Easy, Standard and Hard apply 0.96, 1.00 and 1.04 adjustments and are recorded separately.

The result screen reports exact counts, counts within one and your average answer time. If any of your totals equalled the targets plus their lookalikes, it tells you that as well, because it is the most common and most fixable mistake in the game. As with every Puzzle Workout result, this is a recreational score for personal comparison, not an attention test or a medical assessment.

How each board is built and checked

Every board comes from a seeded generator, so the same seed always reproduces the same boards. The generator chooses the target, the number of targets, lookalikes and other symbols, then places the symbols one at a time at random spots. A spot is accepted only if it keeps a clear gap from every symbol already placed and sits inside the board’s edge, so no symbol overlaps another and none is clipped.

Before a board is shown, a separate validator ignores the stored answer and recounts the targets, lookalikes and other symbols from the symbols themselves. It also checks the lookalike share, the size and tilt of every symbol, the gap between every pair, the distance from every edge, and that consecutive boards change both target and count. A board that fails any check is never published.

Common Target Count mistakes

Counting the lookalikes

On Standard and Hard this is the classic slip, and the feedback names it when your total exactly equals the targets plus their lookalikes. It usually means the distinguishing feature dropped out of your search halfway through the board.

Restarting after losing your place

A second count from the top almost never finishes before the cover. Finishing the sweep and estimating what you skipped keeps you close, and close still scores.

Waiting for the cover to start typing

The cover is a deadline, not a signal. If your count is finished at four seconds, type it and press Enter; the extra time only costs you pace.

Keyboard, touch and accessibility

Type with the number keys on the top row or the numeric keypad, use Backspace to erase, and press Enter to submit. On a touch screen, use the on-screen keypad, whose keys meet the site’s 44-pixel minimum. The keypad keys are ordinary buttons, so you can also Tab to them and press Space. The target is named in words as well as drawn, and each round’s feedback is announced as text.

The board itself is a visual task with no text equivalent: reading out every symbol would turn a counting puzzle into a listening one. That limitation is recorded on the accessibility page. Leaving the tab pauses the game and hides the board until you choose to resume, so a pause can never be used for a longer look.

Target Count questions