Reorder a row of scrambled colour caps into the smoothest possible transition between two locked endpoints, graded in perceptual CIE Lab.
Was this fun?
How to play
The two end caps are fixed. Drag the caps between them into the order that makes the gradient flow most smoothly, then check your arrangement against the ideal.
Drag a cap left or right; the row reorders live and shows your current roughness.
Aim to minimise the roughness toward the ideal value.
Check to score and reveal any confusion zones where caps landed out of place.
Higher perceptual accuracy plus a speed bonus earns more points.
Controls
Desktop: click and drag caps; click Daily/Practice, the 5/7/9 size, New, or Check.
Phone & tablet: drag caps with your finger, touch-enabled.
Game modes
Daily and Practice seeds, with row lengths of 5, 7, or 9 caps.
Tips & strategy
Work from both locked ends inward so each cap bridges its neighbours.
If two caps look equally placed, swap them and watch the roughness number, it settles ties your eye can't.
What you'll learn
Tonecatch trains perceptual colour ordering using the same CIE Lab space designers rely on.
For parents & teachers: the colour science designers use.
Origins
Ordering caps between two fixed ends to make the smoothest gradient is hue arrangement, the task the Farnsworth-Munsell colour test is built on.
Checking against an ideal arrangement is the original scoring.
There is a correct answer because a gradient between two colours is a path through a colour space, and each cap sits at a definite point along it. What varies is whether your eye can rank neighbours that differ by very little.
About Tonecatch
Tonecatch trains perceptual colour ordering using the same CIE Lab space designers rely on. It is an original, free browser game built in-house.
A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.
