How to play Pattern Lock
Pattern Lock is a sequence memory game on a board of nine nodes, arranged three by three. Each round has two clearly separated phases. During the Watch phase the nodes light up one at a time in amber and the board does not accept input at all. When the last node has flashed, the phase label switches to Repeat, the board turns neon green, and you tap the same nodes back in the same order.
Tap the nodes on a touchscreen, or use the number keys 1 to 9, which map to the grid from top-left to bottom-right exactly as printed on each node. Press R at any time to start a new run. Every node registers a single press, so a tap that feels like one tap counts as one input.
Preview timing, input timing, and progression
The first sequence is three nodes long. Each node holds the board for 0.62 seconds on level 1, and that slot shortens by 0.03 seconds per level down to a floor of 0.30 seconds, which is reached at level 12 and never gets faster after that. So the level 1 preview takes about 1.9 seconds in total, and a fourteen-node preview on level 12 takes about 4.2 seconds.
Clearing a level appends one node to the end of the same sequence rather than generating a fresh one. The sequence on level 1 is three nodes, so the sequence on level L is L + 2 nodes, and everything you already memorised stays valid — each level only asks you to remember one more node.
Each round also has an input window of about 1.1 seconds per node plus 1.2 seconds: 4.5 seconds for a three-node sequence, 10 seconds for eight nodes. Letting that window expire ends the run the same way a wrong tap does. In practice the window is generous and mostly exists so that an untouched board does not sit in the input phase forever.
The run clock is the real pressure
One clock runs for the whole session, not per round. It starts at 9 seconds, never pauses — it keeps draining during the preview, during your input, and during the short pause after a correct round — and clearing a level adds 4 seconds back, capped at 13 seconds. The bar above the board shows it, and it turns red under 3 seconds.
That is the arithmetic that ends every run. The reward for clearing a level is a constant 4 seconds, but the cost of a level grows with the sequence, because a longer preview takes longer to play out. Up to level 5 a cleared level pays for itself and you bank time toward the 13-second cap. From level 6 onward each level costs more clock than it returns, and the deficit widens as the sequence grows. Even a player who never once mistaps eventually watches the clock reach zero.
Repeated nodes
Nodes do repeat within a sequence, and they have to: there are only nine nodes, so any sequence longer than nine has to reuse them. The rule the game applies is narrower — the same node is never lit twice in a row. Two consecutive flashes on one node would be impossible to tell apart from a single long flash, so that case is excluded when a new node is appended. A node can and will appear again later in the same sequence.
Scoring
The score for a run is the sequence length you reached, which is the number shown as LENGTH during play. Because a run starts with a three-node sequence already on the board, the lowest possible score is 3. The end-of-run panel also reports the level you reached, how many levels you cleared, and the longest sequence you successfully repeated. Your best result is stored in your browser on the device where you play; there is no account and no global ranking.
A few things that actually help
Group the sequence instead of memorising nine separate nodes. Most people hold three or four chunks far more reliably than a flat list, and because each level only appends to the end, you can keep your existing chunks and attach the new node to the last one.
Read the nodes as positions on the grid — corner, edge, centre — rather than as numbers to recite. The board is always the same nine nodes in the same places, so a shape is easier to replay than a list of digits.
Do not slow down to be careful. The clock is running during your input too, and hesitating on a sequence you already know is the most common way to lose time you cannot get back.
Device support
Pattern Lock is built for portrait play on phones and tablets and works in a desktop browser with the keyboard. It is self-contained, with no download, account, or third-party runtime.
