game 10 of 16 · measures focus

Digit span

Inside TELLS it's “The Sequence” — watch the code. Type it back. It gets longer.

part of the full 16-game test · about 12 minutes

What the Digit span is

A code flashes, you type it back, and it gets one digit longer each round until it beats you. Digit span is one of the oldest measures in psychology — it's inside the WAIS intelligence battery — and your ceiling is a direct read of working-memory capacity. Most adults top out around seven digits, give or take two.

What it measures

Your longest recalled span feeds the focus axis: holding a nine-digit code isn't memorising, it's refusing to let go under load. Early collapses usually aren't about memory at all — they're attention slipping during the flash.

Scattered

Your attention is a butterfly. Details slip the net.

Steady

You hold the thread until something shinier wanders by.

Locked-in

You hold a long sequence in your head and don't drop it.

Why hiring assessments use it

Working-memory span predicts performance on jobs that juggle live information — which is why hiring assessments include a span task in some costume. There's no trick to it, which is what makes it credible.

TELLS is an independent project — not affiliated with pymetrics, Harver, or any employer's assessment. This is the fun version.