Alarm mission
Tap the Color
The word says one color and is printed in another, and only the ink counts.
Free on the App Store. Every mission is free, on every plan.
Try it here
Same mission, in your browser.
No download, no sound. Finish it and the alarm stops, exactly like it does at 6:30.
Tap the COLOR of the word, not what it says.
Alarm dismissed
That's exactly how it works in the app.
Shown at the app's default: 5 correct taps. In the app you pick 5 to 100. A wrong tap costs you a point and moves you on, it never counts toward the target.
How it works
- 1
Choose how many correct taps you need when you set the alarm.
- 2
When it rings, a color word appears in the wrong color. Tap the color it is printed in.
- 3
Hit your target and the alarm stops. There is a working version further down this page.
You set 5 to 100 correct taps, in steps of 5
Why it works
The Stroop test has been embarrassing people in psychology labs since 1935, and the reason is worth knowing. If you show a fluent reader the word RED printed in blue ink and ask for the ink color, they will hesitate. Reading happens whether you asked for it or not, so the wrong answer arrives first and has to be pushed aside. That override lives in the part of your brain that is slowest to come online after sleep.
Which is the design. Most alarm puzzles can be finished by pattern, and pattern survives being half asleep perfectly well. This one cannot, because the pattern is the trap: the generator guarantees the word and the ink never match, so no round ever rewards the lazy answer. Each round gives you three buttons: the color the word names, the color it is printed in, and one distractor. Tap the ink and the counter climbs. Tap wrong and your race score drops by one, floored at zero, while your progress toward silencing the alarm stays exactly where it was. That asymmetry is on purpose, so carelessness costs you a duel without trapping someone who is genuinely fighting to get their eyes working. Five correct taps is the minimum and needs about fifteen seconds of real concentration. The dial runs to a hundred in fives, and past a certain point it stops being a puzzle and becomes a sustained argument with your own reading reflex.
There is a live version of the mission on this page. It is a fair test, with one caveat: doing it awake, in daylight, with coffee in reach is nothing like doing it at 5:50am. That gap is the joke the whole app runs on.
FAQ
Tap the Color, answered.
Why is the Stroop test so hard when you're half asleep?
Reading is automatic and color naming is not, so your brain hands you the word before you have finished looking at the ink. Overriding that takes conscious effort, which is exactly the thing you do not have at 6am.
What happens if I tap the wrong color?
You lose a point from your race score, and it never drops below zero. It does not undo progress toward switching the alarm off, so a bad guess costs you a little pride and no more.
How many options are there?
Three per round: the color the word names, the color it is printed in, and one unrelated color to stop you from just picking the odd one out.
Can I learn to beat it on autopilot?
Not really. The word and the ink are re-rolled every round and they never match, so there is no pattern to memorise, only the same small act of self control every time.
See other missions
Pick as many as you like.
When the alarm rings, one of the missions you picked fires, chosen at random. Finish it and the alarm stops on the spot.
Tomorrow morning, don't do it alone.
Set your first alarm tonight. Solo alarms and all 15 missions are free.
