Score
0
Best
-
A small round map shows you and a few landmarks. You are told which way you face — tap on the dial where the named landmark lies from you. Twenty questions in four stages: the arrow goes, the map turns, and finally another landmark tells you your heading. Scored to a hundredth of a point for speed.
Tap Start. The blue dot on the round map is you; a sentence above the map says which way you are facing and which landmark to find. Tap the wedge of the dial below where that landmark lies from you — the top of the dial is always straight ahead, the bottom is behind you. The coloured ring around the map is your 10 seconds for that question.
A run is 20 questions in four stages of five. Stage 1: the map has north at the top, a blue arrow on your dot shows where you face, there are 3 landmarks and the dial has 4 wedges (ahead, right, behind, left); the very first question always faces north. Stage 2: the arrow is gone and the sentence names your heading (north, east, south or west); 4 landmarks, still 4 wedges. Stage 3: the whole map is turned by a random 30° to 330°, so only the red N on the rim tells you where north is; the heading can be any of 8 compass points, there are 5 landmarks and the dial has 8 wedges. Stage 4: the map is still turned, there are 6 landmarks, and your heading comes from another landmark — you are walking toward it, your back is to it, or it is on your left or right.
The landmark is never near the edge of a wedge: it is at least 23° from a border on the 4-wedge dial and at least 13.5° on the 8-wedge dial. The dial always shows every direction, so its layout gives nothing away, and over a run the right answers are spread evenly over the wedges.
A correct tap scores 50 points plus a speed bonus that starts at 50 and falls by 5 points per second, reaching 0 at 10 seconds. A wrong tap costs 35 points; if the ring runs out the question scores 0. After a correct answer the next question comes 0.65 seconds later. After a miss the map shows your line of sight and a line to the landmark for 1.6 seconds, and the right wedge lights up. Only the time from the question appearing to your tap counts. Your total is shown to two decimal places (it cannot end below 0), and the result card shows how many you got right, your average answer time and the points from each stage. On a keyboard, the arrow keys pick ahead, right, behind and left; for the diagonals use the number pad (7 8 9 / 4 6 / 1 2 3) or Q W E / A D / Z X C.
Don't turn the map — turn yourself. For a heading in words, learn the four flips by heart: facing north, the map reads like the dial; facing south, everything is reversed (what is up on the screen is behind you, and screen-left is your right); facing east, screen-up is your left and screen-down is your right; facing west, screen-up is your right. Find where the landmark sits from your dot on the screen first, then apply the flip. It takes one glance instead of an imagined walk.
When the map is turned, the red N on the rim is the only fact that matters, and the faint dots on the rim are 30° apart. Find N, then step clockwise round the rim from it by the heading — east is a quarter turn, south-west three-eighths of a turn the other way — and that rim point is the direction you face. Now treat that point as 'up' and read the landmark against it. Do not trust the top of the screen: once the map turns, screen-up is almost never north.
In stage 4 you do not need north at all, which is why it is faster than stage 3 once it clicks. Draw the line from your dot to the cue landmark. 'Walking toward' means that line is ahead; 'your back to it' means ahead is the opposite way; 'on your left' means ahead is a quarter turn clockwise from that line, and 'on your right' a quarter turn anticlockwise. Then read the asked landmark against that heading. The left/right cues are where most points are lost — say to yourself 'it's on my left, so I face a quarter turn clockwise from it'.
The score rewards speed, but guessing never pays: an instant random tap on the four-wedge dial is worth −1.25 points on average and on the eight-wedge dial about −18. The landmark is always well inside a wedge — at least 23° or 13.5° from a border — so if it looks like it sits on a line, you have the heading wrong; check the cue again rather than tapping between two wedges.