Trail Mark

A short route arrives as a list of compass directions — two north, three east, one south — and a single square on the grid is marked as the start. Hide the list and walk the route out, one square at a time, from that start. Clear a trail and the next one is a step longer, from three steps up to nine. The route never crosses itself, so a square you have already walked is never the next one. Three wrong presses end the run.

It runs entirely on your device: 0 network requests, works offline. No ads, no account, nothing to buy, and no betting, money or prizes of any kind.

1. Focus the board — click it, or press Tab until it is focused.
2. Read the trail. It is shown above the board as blocks, not as single steps: three east is one badge, and the count of blocks is printed beside it. The marker — a diamond — is already standing on the start square, and a ring marks that square once you have moved off it.
3. Hide it with any key, or by tapping the board. That press only hides the trail — it is never counted as a step, so you cannot lose anything by starting.
4. Walk it. Left, right, up and down (or W A S D) move the marker one square. You can also tap any square next to the marker; the four squares you can step to show their arrow.
5. Watch the slips. Anything that is not the next step of the trail costs one slip — a wrong direction, a step off the edge, a tap on a distant square, or a key that is not an arrow. You have three for the whole run. A slip never takes back the steps you have already walked.
6. Keep going. Seven trails, three steps up to nine. The run ends when you clear the last one or spend the third slip, and the result card tells you the longest trail you walked.

How do you remember a sequence of directions?

By counting blocks instead of steps. East, east, east, south is four presses but only two things to hold — "three east, then one south" — and by the time a trail is eight steps long the difference between holding eight items and holding three is the difference between clearing it and not. That regrouping is called chunking, and it is the single biggest lever anyone has on short-term memory: the number of items you can hold barely moves with practice, but what counts as one item is entirely up to you. This game is built to make that visible. It shows the trail already grouped, it prints how many blocks there are, it never deals a route made only of single steps, and it pays you per block as well as per step — so the habit the score rewards is the habit that actually works.

Why does a key that does nothing still cost a slip?

Because the rule is one sentence rather than a table of exceptions: while you are walking, a press is either the next step of the trail or it is a slip. That keeps the game honest in both directions. It means a run always ends — you cannot sit on a board pressing keys forever — and it means the three slips are a real budget you are spending rather than a vague allowance. Only the four arrows and taps next to the marker can be steps, so in practice the rule costs nothing once you know it. The press that hides the trail is the one deliberate exception, because charging you for starting the round would be a trap rather than a rule.

Is the trail timed?

There is no clock anywhere in this game. The reveal is counted in moves, not seconds — the board only advances when you do something — so reading slowly costs you nothing, and the same session plays identically on a five-year-old phone and a new laptop. The trail stays up until you decide to hide it.

Why can the route never cross itself?

Because it is what makes the answer unambiguous, and it is checked rather than hoped for. Every trail is built by walking it: each step lands on a square inside the grid that has not been used yet, and a verifier re-simulates the finished route from scratch to confirm both facts before it is ever dealt. Two useful things follow. At every moment exactly one neighbouring square is the next step, so the route can never leave you asking "was this the second visit or the fourth?"; and a square already on your trail is provably never the answer, which turns a four-way guess into a three-way deduction whenever you are unsure.

What decides how long the trail is shown for?

Its blocks, not its steps. The reveal budget pays reading time per step and per block, so a zig-zag is shown longer than a straight sweep of the same length — because it genuinely is more to take in. The same measurement decides which routes get dealt at all: a trail that is one unbroken line is rejected as too easy to be a memory test, and one made entirely of single steps is rejected because there is nothing in it to chunk.

Is there any money, betting or in-app purchase in this?

None, and there never will be. No currency, no purchases, no lives to refill, and nothing to win or lose but the length of the trail you reached.

Can I play it with a keyboard or a screen reader?

Both, fully. The trail is announced the way you should be encoding it — "start at column 2 row 1, then three east, two south" — rather than as a list of coordinates, and the block count is spoken with it. Every square is a button with a spoken label, and nothing is carried by colour: the marker is a diamond, a walked square is a dot with its step number, a refused step is a cross, and the squares you can step to print their own arrow.

Five by five, seven rounds, trails of three to nine steps, three slips for the whole run. Nine is the ceiling on a board this size on purpose: past that a route that never repeats a square starts to be forced by the edges rather than chosen, so the game would be measuring the board instead of you. Every trail is generated from the day's seed, so the daily board is the same board for everyone, and because a trail is built by walking it rather than drawn at random, one can never be impossible. Progress and best lengths are stored in your browser on this device only; clearing site data clears them, and nothing is ever uploaded.

Path Recall draws the route on the grid itself and numbers its squares, so it tests the shape rather than the directions — the natural next step if you want the same skill without the translation. Recall Grid asks for a set of squares with no order at all, and Number Span is the same ladder in digits if you would rather test verbal recall than spatial.

Bookmark this page (Ctrl+D, or ⌘D on Mac) or install the app — it works offline the next time you need it.