Keel — the daily balance gauntlet
How true is your eye? Keel is a free browser spatial judgment game: five quick rounds, the same for everyone each day, each one a different way of seeing space — balance, halves, reflection, area and distance. No signup — a full daily takes about a minute.
The five rounds
| CENTER | A scatter of dots, unevenly clumped. Tap the single point where they would balance — the true center of the scatter — then lock it in. Scored by how far your mark is from the real balance point — close counts, and even a rough miss earns partial credit. |
| SPLIT | One irregular blob, one vertical line. Drag the line until the shape has exactly equal area on both sides. Bulges lie — a wide thin lobe can outweigh a tall fat one. |
| MIRROR | A dot and an angled mirror line. Tap exactly where the dot's reflection lands on the other side. Easy when the mirror is upright; the daily one rarely is. |
| SIZE | An irregular blob on the left, a circle on the right. Drag the circle bigger or smaller until the two shapes cover the same area. Spiky shapes look bigger than they are. |
| MID | A winding path. Tap its exact halfway point — halfway along the path, not halfway across the screen. The curvier the stretch, the more length hides in it. |
Scoring
Every round scores your eye for space from 0 to 100 — full marks for dead-on, partial credit for close. Your daily result is the average of the five rounds, plus a five-square trail (🟩 dead centre · 🟨 close · 🟥 way off) you can copy and send as a challenge — the link carries your score, so a friend who opens it is dared to out-eye you. Come back tomorrow for a fresh gauntlet and build a daily streak — beat yesterday's score to sharpen it, and if you miss a day your personal best is saved and waiting. The menu shows your last seven days as a chain of squares — each finished gauntlet fills one, and today's pulses until you play. After you finish, the results screen shows today's rivals — how many players ran the gauntlet in the last 24 hours, the best score among them, and where yours ranks. Rivals are always anonymous: a count and a score, never names or accounts.
Controls
| Adjust | Tap or drag (mouse or finger) — tap where the balance point, mirror image or halfway point is, drag the cut line or the circle. Desktop: arrow keys fine-tune. |
| Answer | The LOCK IN button commits your answer — no timer, take your time. ENTER locks too. |
| Start a round | Each round waits for you — nothing starts until you're ready. |
Modes
Daily gauntlet: 5 seeded rounds — scatters, blobs, mirrors and paths identical for every player worldwide that day. One attempt each. Mid-gauntlet progress is saved if you get interrupted.
Practice — the spatial trainer: endless rounds, your way. Pick all five mixed or drill a single skill — center, split, mirror, size or mid. Every drill climbs a 12-level difficulty ladder: score green and the next round gets harder — wilder blobs, tighter tolerances, curvier paths — score red and it steps back down. Your current and best level per skill live in the picker: how high can you climb? Keel also keeps a lifetime accuracy average per skill (from both daily and practice rounds, stored only in your browser), so the picker doubles as your spatial profile: it shows your average and level for each skill and flags your weakest round from today's gauntlet. Every round you finish — daily or practice — also earns XP equal to its score: climb a 12-rank ladder from deck hand through plumb bob and master surveyor up to dead centre. Your rank only ever goes up, and it lives in your browser — no account needed.
Tips
- Center: find the densest clump first, then let the outliers drag your mark toward them — one far dot pulls harder than it looks.
- Split: don't split the width — split the weight. A skinny tail needs a lot of line-shift to matter.
- Mirror: the reflection sits the same distance behind the line, on the perpendicular — walk your eye straight across the mirror, not straight across the screen.
- Size: squint until both shapes are smudges — smudges compare areas more honestly than outlines do.
- Mid: curvy stretches hide length. If one half wiggles more, the halfway point shifts into it.
Keel is a game, not a vision test — it measures practice and judgement, and every round rewards a slower, more honest look.
FAQ
Is it free? Do I need an account? Free, no account, no install needed. It runs in any modern browser, on phones and school Chromebooks alike. If you'd like the daily one tap away, you can optionally add Keel to your home screen — once you're on a 2-day streak, an "add to home screen" button appears after your daily on supported browsers. No download, no store, it's the same game in an app-shaped wrapper.
Is it the same puzzle for everyone? Yes — the daily gauntlet is seeded by the date, so your 73 and your friend's 88 came from identical scatters and blobs.
Does it work in my language? Practically yes — the rounds are dots, shapes and lines, not words.
Who made this? Keel is an original game by Yuki Andersen. More free games: Gauge, Glimpse, Tempo, Prism, Wordpull, Floe, Ballast, Well Duel, Well Putt, Wellspring.
