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Story details

Read a short story of who went where, with what and when; it vanishes, and you answer one detail. Longer stories, harder questions, closer lures.

  • Memory
  • Timed
  • 26 levels

How it plays

A short story appears — a few lines like “At 9:30 am, Ravi took a kite to the station.” Read it; when the time is up it is taken away, and one question is asked about a detail.

Questions start with where someone went and what they took, then who went somewhere, at what time, who went next, and which of a few things was not in the story at all. Levels add lines, unlock question kinds, and give less time to read.

From a point on, the wrong options are details from the story itself, attached to the wrong person. Knowing a kite was in it is not enough; you have to know whose it was.

Keys

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

What it trains

This practises reading for detail and keeping who-did-what straight. It improves recall of stories like these, not memory or intelligence in general.

Learn

How to get better at story details: 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. Read each line once and turn it into one picture holding all of it: “At 9:30 am, Ravi took a kite to the station” is Ravi flying a kite on the platform under the station clock at half past nine.
  2. Then go down the names, saying each person’s thing and place: “Ravi, kite, station; Asha, drum, market”. This ties each detail to its owner, which is what the lures test.
  3. With time left, say the names in order, earliest first, and note the times as a run: “seven, half nine, one, four”.
  4. When the question comes, find the line in your memory first, then look at the options. Pick the one that is in that line, not the one that merely feels familiar.

Techniques and tricks

  • One picture per line

    Bind the person, the thing and the place into a single scene with the person doing something with the thing at the place. A detail that lives inside a scene stays with its owner.

  • Rehearse by the cues you will get

    Questions name a person (where did they go, what did they take, when, who went next) or a place (who went there). Rehearse both ways: name to thing and place, and place to name.

  • The lines run in time order

    The story is always told earliest first. Hold the names as one string, and “Who went next?” is simply the name after; “At what time?” must fall between the times of the lines either side.

    e.g. Omar at 7:00 am, Vikram at 1:00 pm, Farah at 1:30 pm: who went next after Vikram? Farah.

  • Times as a rhythm

    Times are on the hour or half hour, 7:00 am to 7:30 pm. Say them in order as a short chant and notice the jumps.

    e.g. 1:00, 2:00, 2:30 and 6:00 pm as “one, two, half two — six”: a jump of three and a half hours before the last.

  • Rule in, then pick the odd one out

    For “Which … was NOT in the story?”, every other option was in it. Place each one you can in a line; the one you cannot place anywhere is the answer.

As the levels climb

  • Four things rise in turn: one more line, a new kind of question, the lures moving into the story, and less reading time. About a dozen levels in, every question kind is open and the reading time is at its shortest; from then on only lines are added, up to 20.
  • Questions unlock in order: where and what from the start; then who went to a place; then at what time; then who went next; and last, which thing, place or person was not in the story.
  • At first most wrong options are names, places and things that never appeared, with one from the story among them. A few levels up, every wrong option is from the story, attached to someone else: knowing a kite was there no longer helps.
  • Reading time is 3 seconds plus 2.6 a line, cut to 90%, then 80%, then 72% as you climb. At 72% each line gets under 2 seconds, so picture each line in one pass and keep what is left for the rehearsal.

Traps to avoid

  • The wrong owner: a thing, place or person from the story, but from another line. Answer from the scene you pictured for that person, not from what feels familiar.
  • The neighbouring time: for “At what time?”, the times of the lines just before and after are the first wrong options offered. Tie each time to its own scene, and use the order to check.
  • The one before: for “Who went next?”, the person who went just before is offered whenever there is one — the slip of having the order but running it the wrong way. Next means later in the day.
  • Missing the NOT: “Which thing was NOT in the story?” asks for the one absent. Every other option was in the story, so the familiar ones are all wrong.

How to practise

  • Use “Questions to include” to drill the kind you miss most — time and order questions need their own rehearsal — then mix them back.
  • Raise “Reading time (%)” while you learn to build a picture per line; bring it back to 100 once the pictures come in one pass.
  • Raise “Options shown” towards 6 to face more of the story’s own details as wrong options at once.
  • Set “Lines at level 0” up once three-line stories are easy, so the ladder spends its levels on what you find hard.

Levels

Each question has a clock that comes from the work it asks for. There are 26 levels with the default settings, and the counter stops at the real top. 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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