The chimp test is a working-memory challenge inspired by a famous chimpanzee study. Numbers appear on a grid, then hide after your first tap; touch them in order from memory. Each round adds one more number.
The famous chimp study, explained →
More tests: Number Memory Test · Stroop Test · all tests
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Numbers appear scattered across a grid. The moment you tap the first one, every other number hides behind a blank tile — and you must tap them all in ascending order from memory. Clear a round and the next adds another number; you get three strikes before the run ends. Your score is the highest count you completed.
The test earns its name honestly: in a famous study at a primate research institute, young chimpanzees performed this exact task with a speed and accuracy that embarrassed the human students competing against them. It's a test of spatial working memory — holding a map of "what was where" that survives for only a few seconds.
Don't rehearse the digits — photograph the layout. The strongest approach is to take in the whole pattern as a shape (a constellation, a path snaking across the grid) before your first tap, then trust the picture. Deliberately slow first-taps beat rushed ones: the extra half-second of looking is where the memory is actually built. The test starts at four numbers and only levels up once you've shown a count twice, so progress is honest.
The full story of the chimp study — and the debate over what it really proved — is in our chimp memory study guide.
Most people top out around 8 or 9 numbers; consistent double-digit runs are excellent. The guide explains where the limits come from.
Young chimps in the original study beat untrained humans convincingly — though later work showed practised humans can close much of the gap.
Tapping any number out of order. Three strikes across the run and it's over — accuracy matters as much as capacity.