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Direction sense

Walk 3 m north, turn right, walk 2 m… Where are you now from the start, and how far in a straight line? Longer walks, told by turns.

  • Spatial
  • Timed
  • Endless levels

How it plays

A walk is told in words, leg by leg. Keep track of where you are and say where you end up from the start — so many metres north or south, so many east or west.

At first every leg names its direction. Later the walk is told by turns: turn right from north and you face east; turn left from east and you face north. Later still the question is the straight-line distance, which is the long side of a right-angled triangle.

Levels add legs without end. The working traces your position as coordinates after every leg; the wrong options are the usual slips — the way back instead of the way there, east and west swapped, a turn taken the wrong way, the last leg forgotten.

Keys

Space starts and skips ahead · 1–9 pick · Enter submits · Esc stops. On a phone, tap.

What it trains

This practises keeping track of position and heading through a described route, as the direction-sense questions of aptitude tests ask. It claims nothing about finding your way in the world.

Learn

How to get better at direction sense: the method, the techniques, what each new level asks of you, and the traps the wrong answers are made of.

Your approach to each question

  1. Keep two running totals, never a picture: metres north (south is minus) and metres east (west is minus). Start both at 0.
  2. For each leg, work out its compass direction first — it is given, or it follows from the turn — then add its length to the right total.
  3. At the end, turn the totals into words: a positive north total is “north”, a negative one “south”; the same for east and west. Both 0 is “Back at the start”.
  4. For the straight-line question, take the two totals as the sides of a right angle and find the long side. Ignore the signs.

Techniques and tricks

  • Turn by the clock

    Right is a quarter turn clockwise: north → east → south → west → north. Left goes the other way. Say the new heading out loud at every turn.

    e.g. Facing east, turn left: north. Facing south, turn right: west

  • Legs alternate axes

    Every turn here is a quarter turn, so the legs go north–south, east–west, north–south… in turn. Legs 1, 3, 5 are on one axis and legs 2, 4 on the other — add each group separately.

    e.g. 3 N, 2 E, 5 S, 4 W: north 3 − 5 = −2, east 2 − 4 = −2, so 2 m south, 2 m west

  • Count rights minus lefts

    In a walk told by turns, the heading on any leg is the first heading turned by (rights − lefts) quarter turns. Two rights face you back the way you came; a right and a left cancel.

    e.g. Face north, then right, right, left: 2 − 1 = 1 quarter turn, so east

  • Know the triples

    The straight-line answers are built on 3-4-5, 5-12-13, 8-15-17 and 7-24-25, scaled up by a whole number. Spot the pair of totals and you know the distance without a square root.

    e.g. 9 m south and 12 m east: 3-4-5 times 3, so 15 m

  • Root only if you must

    If the totals are not an obvious triple, square, add and take the root. The answer is always a whole number of metres here, so if your root is not whole, recheck the totals.

    e.g. √(16² + 30²) = √1,156 = 34 m (8-15-17 times 2)

As the levels climb

  • The walk grows a leg each round of levels, without end. Never hold the route as a picture past three legs: update the two totals after each leg and forget the leg.
  • Then the walk is told by turns rather than compass names — about half the time once it arrives. The work is the same, plus one step: the new heading before each leg.
  • Next the straight-line question joins. Get the two totals exactly first; a wrong total is the usual reason for a wrong distance.
  • The clock closes in three steps, to 80%, 65% and 55%. Under a tight clock, add as you read — each sentence is one update — rather than reading the whole walk first.

Traps to avoid

  • The way back given instead of the way there: “2 m south, 2 m west” when you are 2 m north and 2 m east of the start. The question asks where you are from the start.
  • East and west swapped, or north and south swapped. Fix the signs once — north and east plus — and do not change them mid-walk.
  • A turn taken the wrong way. It flips every later leg, so one slip sends the end point far off. Check each turn against the clock face before adding the leg.
  • The last leg forgotten: the totals stop one leg short. Count the legs you added against the sentences.
  • For the straight line, adding the two totals (the way round the corner), or giving the whole distance walked. The straight line is shorter than both.

How to practise

  • Set The walk is told to “By compass directions” until the two totals come easily, then to “By left and right turns” to drill the heading changes on their own.
  • Tick only “Where you are” under Questions at first; add the straight-line distance once you can reach the end point reliably.
  • Learn the four triples and their doubles and triples — 6-8-10, 9-12-15, 10-24-26, 16-30-34 — so the distance is recognition, not arithmetic.
  • After a miss, read the working: it lists your position as coordinates after every leg, so the first leg where yours differs is the slip.

Levels

Each question has a clock that comes from the work it asks for. There is no last level: at least one dial turns without end. Your level is judged on your last ten answers, every ten: 90% moves you up, below 80% moves you down, which holds most people near four in five right.

All of it is in the settings beside Start — how many answers a judgement looks at and how often it recalibrates, the thresholds, the time, which questions, how many options, and whether you see each verdict at once or review them together at the judgement. You can also jump to any level.

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