Copy That

Copy That is a free online rhythm memory game set in a 1970s AM radio studio. The station plays a sound cart exactly once: a knock at the door, a doorbell, a drum fill, a short word in Morse code or a playground clapping game. Then the MIC LIVE lamp comes on and you tap the rhythm back on one big button. It is a quick test of how well you can repeat a rhythm you have only heard once, it runs in your browser with no download, and a day's five rhythms take about a minute, which makes it one of our favourite quick games and timing games.

Every day brings five rhythms, and they get harder. The first is three slow knocks on a door, a near-certain win for anyone. Then comes a doorbell's ding-dong with one quick pair, a six-hit drum fill in fast sixteenths, a word in Morse code whose dots and dashes you only hear in the spacing of the beeps, and finally a two-bar clapping game of pats, claps and partner claps with the off-beats that catch people out. Each rhythm plays with sound and with a pulse you can see, the needle of the studio's VU meter and a blip on the tape, so you can play it with the sound off too.

After each take a log sheet slides up. It shows the tape in three tracks: the original, your taps over it, and everyone's average take as a ghost track, with an arrow wherever the crowd comes in early or late and the one gap most people rush or drag. A red stamp gives your take as a percentage, say 93% in time, with plain notes on what happened: hits caught, extra taps, how far off you were on average and whether your tempo drifted. Played for fun, everyone hears the same five rhythms each day, so you also see today's ratings, a chart of every listener's accuracy with your bar in orange and how many of them you were closer than. At the end, the station card lays out all five takes with a little tape of each, your percentages and your total, ready for a screenshot or the share button.

Scoring is about timing, measured per tap. Your first tap starts the take and lines it up with the rhythm, and the game forgives a steady tempo that is a little slow or fast, up to twelve percent. Every other tap is matched to its hit and scored by how far off it is: full marks within a sixtieth of a second, and nothing beyond a tenth to a fifth of a second, depending on how much room there is around the hit, so quick pairs are judged tighter than slow knocks. A tap you leave out scores nothing for its hit, and an extra tap counts against you. Each rhythm is worth up to 1,000 points, so a perfect day is 5,000, and ranked attempts post your run to the leaderboards of this skill game.

Copy That is a one-button game that works the same on every device. On a phone, tap anywhere on the screen; on a computer, click or press Space, Enter or the down arrow. It is a rhythm test, a memory game and a little brain game at once, and one of the mobile games and PC games that take a minute a day. If you like counting seconds in your head, try Darkroom next.