Whack-a-Mole

Whack-a-Mole brings the fairground cabinet into the browser with none of the queueing. A mole pops out of one of nine holes, stays up for a moment and drops back down whether you got it or not. Your only job is to be faster than that window, which starts comfortable and narrows steadily across the thirty-second round. It is the purest form of a targeting reaction test: no pattern to learn, no strategy to optimise, just a random location and the time it takes your hand to arrive there.

• Watch the three-by-three grid of holes.
• Tap or click a mole the instant it appears.
• A hit scores ten points; a mole that drops on its own counts as a miss.
• Keep going until the thirty-second countdown ends.

• Only one mole is up at a time and it never appears twice in the same hole in a row.
• Tapping an empty hole does nothing — there is no penalty, but there is no reward either.
• The time a mole stays up shrinks from about one second to under half a second.
• The round is a fixed thirty seconds.

• Rest your gaze on the centre hole so every other hole is in peripheral vision.
• Move from wherever you are; returning to a home position between hits wastes time.
• On mobile, hold the phone with both hands and use both thumbs for the outer columns.
• Do not chase a mole that has already started dropping — get ready for the next one instead.
• Late in the round, react rather than aim; precision costs more than it saves.

• Reaction time
• Peripheral vision
• Targeting accuracy

Whack-a-Mole gives you an honest number in half a minute. There is nothing to blame and nothing to learn, so improvement comes purely from attention and posture — and both of those improve within a couple of rounds, which is exactly the kind of feedback that keeps a break from turning into an hour.

How long does a round last?

Thirty seconds, shown as a countdown at the top of the game.

Do the moles get faster?

Yes. They appear more often and stay up for less time as the round runs down.

Is there a penalty for tapping an empty hole?

No. Misplaced taps simply do not score.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. The nine holes are sized for thumbs and the game is mobile-first.

Is my high score saved?

Yes, your best score is stored locally on your device.

• Reaction TimeWhen the circle turns green, tap it as fast as you can.
• Bubble PopPop every bubble before it vanishes and chain combos for a bigger multiplier.
• Tap RushTap the big button as many times as possible in 10 seconds.