How to Play Mental Maths
60-second brain sprint. Fast sums, streak fire, daily challenge.
Mental Maths is a 60-second brain sprint. A sum appears on a card, four answer buttons sit below it, and you tap the right one fast. Every correct answer pushes your streak up, and the streak decides how hard the next question is and how many points it pays. It suits students revising tables, office folks on a chai break, or families racing on one phone.
Difficulty follows you rather than a fixed clock. Questions start with single-digit addition and climb through subtraction, multiplication and division to three-digit sums at Level 7, but only while you keep answering correctly. One wrong tap drops you back to Level 1 and resets your multiplier. The Daily Challenge uses one seeded set for the whole day, so everyone who plays today faces the same sums.
Controls
- Touch: tap one of the four answer buttons under the question card.
- Desktop: press 1, 2, 3 or 4 to pick the first to fourth option.
- The quit button in the corner abandons a run and returns home.
- After a run, Play Again restarts the same mode; Home lets you switch.
How to play, step by step
- Pick Daily Challenge (same questions for everyone today) or Endless (a fresh random set each run).
- A 3-2-1 countdown plays, then the 60-second timer bar starts shrinking.
- Read the sum and tap or key the matching answer. Correct flashes green and the next question loads.
- Wrong flashes red, reveals the right option, shakes the card and resets your streak.
- Every 3 correct in a row raises the question level; every 5 raises the points multiplier.
- When the timer hits zero, the results card shows score, best streak, accuracy and solved count.
Rules and scoring
- A correct answer scores 10 points times the multiplier: 1x for streaks 0 to 4, 2x from 5, 3x from 10, 4x from 15, 5x from 20.
- Question level is 1 plus streak divided by 3, capped at Level 7. Level 1 is single-digit addition, Level 3 times tables, Level 7 sums like 499 minus 199.
- A wrong answer resets streak, multiplier and level. Score is never deducted.
- Coins are paid for scores of 300 or more, up to three runs a day: 20 for 300+, 40 for 600+, 60 for 1000+.
Tips to score higher
- Protect the streak. A 20 streak means 5x points, so one careless tap at Level 6 costs more than a slow answer.
- Wrong options are traps: off by one, off by ten, digit-swapped, or the neighbouring times-table result. Rule those out first.
- For big subtraction, take the tens first, then the units. 199 minus 45: 159, then 154.
- Division always divides cleanly, so any option that is not a whole multiple can be skipped.
- Use keys 1 to 4 on desktop; it is faster than moving a mouse between buttons.
- Play the Daily before Endless so your score compares fairly with friends on identical questions.
Modes and challenges
- Daily Challenge: one seeded question set per date, identical for every player, with your daily best stored.
- Endless: a new random seed every run, still 60 seconds, for practice and all-time bests.
- Both modes submit scores to the leaderboard and share coin rewards.
Frequently asked questions
How long is one game?
Exactly 60 seconds plus a short countdown. There is no pause, so pick a moment when you can focus for a full minute.
Why did questions get easier after a mistake?
Difficulty is tied to your streak. A wrong answer resets it to zero and sends you back to Level 1 until you rebuild it.
Do wrong answers lose points?
No. Your score only rises. The penalty is losing your streak, multiplier and level, which slows your scoring rate.
Is the Daily Challenge the same for everyone?
Yes. The generator is seeded from the date, so every player gets the same sums in the same order that day.