A colour name appears, printed in a colour of its own. Your answer is the colour of the ink, not the one the word spells out. When the two disagree, reading trips you up, and that tension is the game.
How a run works
A run lasts 45 seconds. A word such as RED appears, written in one of the ink colours, and the answer buttons below show the colours. Tap the button that matches the ink.
A right answer moves straight on. A wrong one freezes play for a full second before the next word, so a guess usually costs more than it gains.
Words follow the page language, and the ink never repeats from one word to the next. The figure that counts is how many you answered correctly in the 45 seconds, with accuracy and your average response time on the card.
Levels
- Easy: four colours, and half of the words are written in a different ink.
- Medium: six colours, three words in four written in a different ink.
- Hard: six colours, with colour names on the buttons instead of colour patches, shuffled anew for every run.
Speed tactics
- Look at the edge of the letters rather than the middle of the word; the ink is easier to see than to read.
- Learn where the buttons sit in the first few answers. On Hard the order changes every run, so take one look at it before you start.
- Matching words are a trap too. RED in red ink is still answered by the ink, just as fast.
- The one-second hold after a mistake is long. Over 45 seconds a sure tap beats a quick wrong one.
- On a keyboard, the number keys pick the buttons from left to right.
Questions
What if some inks look alike to me?
The game depends on telling the inks apart. Easy uses only four of them: red, green, blue and yellow. The light and dark themes also shift the shades a little, so try both.
Are the words always in English?
No. They follow the page language: rosso in Italian, piros in Hungarian, punainen in Finnish.
Why are some words in their own colour?
So you cannot simply answer the opposite of the word. Half of the words at Easy and a quarter at the higher levels match their ink.
How is the response time measured?
From the screen frame that showed the word to your tap, in milliseconds. It is shown as an average over the run.
Is there a ladder for this game?
Yes, the Ink & Word ladder, with targets that rise by three answers a step.