About Spot the Odd One
Spot the Odd One fills a grid with identical emoji and hides one that is slightly different. Find it and tap it to earn more time and move to a bigger grid. Your clock starts at 30 seconds and the game ends when it runs out.
How to play
- Press Start to begin with 30 seconds on the clock and a 3 x 3 grid.
- Every grid is filled with one emoji except for a single look-alike, such as a grinning face among smiling faces or a tomato among apples. Tap the odd one.
- Each correct find adds 2 seconds to the clock and gives you a new grid with a new pair of emoji.
- Each wrong tap takes 3 seconds off the clock and flashes the square red.
- The grid grows by one row and column every two finds: 3 x 3 for the first two, then 4 x 4, 5 x 5 and so on, up to a maximum of 9 x 9.
- The game ends when the clock reaches zero. Your score is the number of odd ones you found.
Controls
- Mouse: click the square holding the odd emoji.
- Touch: tap the square holding the odd emoji.
- There are no keyboard controls.
Tips and strategy
- Scan in a fixed order, row by row, instead of darting around. On a large grid it guarantees you do not skip any squares.
- Look for differences in colour first. Pairs like blue and purple hearts or a yellow and green ball stand out faster than small changes in shape.
- Try softening your focus and looking at the whole grid at once. The odd one sometimes pops out as a break in the texture before you find it square by square.
- Avoid guessing. A wrong tap costs 3 seconds while a correct one only gives back 2, so one bad guess wipes out more than a whole find.
- Emoji are drawn by your device, so some pairs look more alike on some systems than others. If a pair is hard on your device, give it a careful scan rather than a quick guess.
Background
Finding the odd item in a crowd is what psychologists call a visual search task. Research associated with Anne Treisman's feature integration theory found that a target differing in a simple feature, such as colour, can seem to pop out almost regardless of how many items surround it, while a target that differs only in a subtler combination of features usually has to be searched for item by item, taking longer as the display grows. Spot the Odd One mixes both kinds of pairs, which is why some grids are solved at a glance and others need a careful scan.
Questions
- How does the timer work?
- You start with 30 seconds. Each correct find adds 2 seconds and each wrong tap removes 3. The game ends when the clock reaches zero.
- How large can the grid get?
- It grows every two finds and stops at 9 x 9, which is reached after 12 finds.
- Why do some emoji pairs look identical to me?
- Emoji are rendered by your operating system or browser, and designs vary between devices. On some systems a pair can look closer than intended.