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Parade Tally

Parade Tally

Shapes and little animals parade across the stage for a few seconds, then you are asked how many of one kind went by. Twelve rounds of bigger crowds, crossing paths and same-colour look-alikes, scored to a tenth of a point for accuracy and speed.

How to play

Tap Start. A legend shows which kinds are about to appear, then they parade across the stage from the sides. When the last one has gone, one kind is shown large: type how many of it passed on the number pad (⌫ corrects) and tap OK. You are not told beforehand which kind will be asked, so keep a count of every kind.

More: full rules and tips

A run is 12 rounds. Round 1 has 7 items and round 12 has 24 (7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24), and the parade gets faster every round, from 100 to 254 stage pixels per second on a stage 360 pixels wide. There are 2 kinds in rounds 1–2, 3 in rounds 3–5, 4 in rounds 6–8 and 5 in rounds 9–12. From round 4 some items walk the other way (30% of them, then half from round 7); from round 6 their speeds differ by up to 25% so they overtake and overlap (35% from round 9), and from round 9 they also drift up or down as they cross. A parade lasts roughly 6½ to 8½ seconds, and the kind you are asked about always passed at least twice.

From round 5 the legend marks a look-alike pair with ≈: two kinds in exactly the same colour that differ only in form — a circle and a ring, a square and a diamond (the same square standing on a corner), a triangle pointing up and one pointing down, a plain fish and a striped fish, or a plain beetle and a spotted one. Rounds 5–8 have one pair and rounds 9–12 have two. Shapes never rotate, so the orientation always tells a square from a diamond and ▲ from ▼.

An exact answer is worth 100 points, off by one 45, off by two 15 and anything further 0. That is multiplied by a speed factor of 0.6 + 0.4 × e^(−t/5), where t is the seconds from the question appearing to your OK: about 0.93 at 1 second, 0.87 at 2, 0.75 at 5, and never below 0.6. The bar under the question shows the factor draining. The reveal lines up every one of the asked kind that passed, next to your answer. Your total over the 12 rounds is shown to one decimal place. On a keyboard, type digits, Backspace and Enter.

Tips & strategy

Every round has a fixed number of items — 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22 and 24 — so you never have to count the last kind. In a three-kind round, count two of them carefully and the third is whatever is left. This is the single biggest help once five kinds are on stage: track the four you find hardest, or the four in the look-alike pairs, and take the remainder from the total.

Count at the curtains, not in the middle. Each item is easiest to name in the moment it slides out from the side, before anything crosses it; once the parade runs in both directions and at different speeds, the middle of the stage is where overlaps happen. From round 4 keep both edges in view and tick each arrival off as it appears. Saying the counts quietly in a fixed order ("fish two, star one, ring three") holds more numbers in mind than trying to see them.

When the legend shows ≈, expect the question to be about the pair — it usually is. Ignore colour entirely for those two and look for the one feature that differs: a hole in the middle, a corner pointing up, a stripe or a spot. Squares and diamonds are the hardest at speed; a diamond comes to a point at the top and bottom, while a square has flat top and bottom edges.

Accuracy is worth far more than speed. Being one off throws away 55 of the 100 points, while taking 5 seconds instead of 2 only lowers the multiplier from 0.87 to 0.75. Take a breath to recall your tally before typing, but do not let the bar run for half a minute — the floor of 0.6 still leaves you 40% short of a quick exact answer.