Chain scoring.

Each round adds one more, and each round is worth more than the last. That is the whole rule, it is the same in every challenge we run, and it is counted by software rather than by a person with a clipboard.

The chain grows by one every round

Each round adds one more thing to remember than the round before. Get a round right and the next one is longer. There is no target to reach and no level to unlock — a run simply keeps going until it ends.

What the participant holdsRound is worthScore so far

And so on. There is no ceiling — a run ends when the participant misses, not when they finish.

Completing a round banks its own number. Round 4 is worth 4, round 9 is worth 9. So the score after any round is simply 1 + 2 + 3 and so on up to that round — which is why a longer run is worth so much more than a slightly shorter one.

What grows, in each challenge

All three are scored identically. What differs is what the participant is holding in their head.

The Fortress

Five circles light up one at a time. The participant taps them back in the same order.

Each round addsOne more circle to the sequence. Round 1 is a single circle.

The Recall

Numbered cells appear on a grid. They vanish, and the participant taps them back in number order.

Each round addsOne more numbered cell. The first round starts with two.

Recognition

A pattern appears, then comes back with exactly one cell moved. The participant taps the one that moved.

Each round addsOne more cell to the pattern. The first round starts with two.

What ends a run

One wrong tap

That is the only thing that ends a run. The moment a participant taps something that is not next in the chain, the run is over and the score is fixed.

There is no clock

Nothing runs out. A participant can take as long as they like on their turn, and thinking carefully costs nothing. Rushing is how most runs end early.

The final score is the last round completed in full. A participant who gets through round 9 and then slips on round 10 scores nine rounds — 45 points. The unfinished round does not count, and it does not take anything away either.

A run that ends on the very first round scores nothing in The Fortress, and one point in the other two, because those begin with two cells rather than one.

What a run is worth

Move the sliders. This is the same arithmetic the platform runs when it invoices a padrino.

9 rounds
$0.25 per point
45Points scored
$11.25From one padrino
$113From ten padrinos

The figures above are what the program receives. A padrino's invoice is 10% higher — that fee is ours, and it never comes out of the pledge. All collected pledges go to the program.

Why it is built this way

Nobody counts it. The software records the run. There is no tally sheet, no volunteer and nothing for a parent to question — which matters more than anything else in a fundraiser where money depends on a number.

Effort is what moves it. A participant cannot raise their score by having wealthier relatives. They raise it by holding one more round than last time, and that takes practice.

It is the same number every time. A program can run one challenge this year and another next without explaining anything new to a single parent, and compare the two results directly.

Talk to us