Answer maths addition questions by whacking the mole with the correct answer. A fun and fast-paced educational game for everyone.
🔨 Whack-a-Mole
Solve the maths, then whack the mole with the right answer!
A maths question appears — whack the mole that shows the correct answer!
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Register Free 🚀About Whack-a-Mole
This is not the fairground game. A sum sits above the board, three moles pop up carrying numbers, and you hit the one holding the correct answer. Sixty seconds, nine holes, and a mole cycle that shortens sharply as you move up the difficulties.
The real difficulty is the clock, not the sums
The arithmetic is deliberately easy: numbers up to 5 on Easy, 10 on Medium and 15 on Hard. What separates the difficulties is how long a mole stays up — 2.2 seconds, 1.5 seconds, and under a second on Hard.
That turns a simple addition question into something harder and more useful: doing arithmetic while under time pressure and while your attention is split across nine holes. Most people can add 7 and 8. Rather fewer can do it reliably while watching three moles disappear.
Solve first, then look
The two wrong moles carry numbers within four of the right answer, so you cannot pick by eye. The efficient loop is to read the sum, commit to the answer, and only then scan the holes for that number.
Players who scan first end up comparing three candidates against a sum they have not finished working out, which costs them the whole cycle. Deciding before you look is worth more than fast hands.
Watch the whole board, not one hole
Nine holes is more than your focused vision covers at arm's length, so staring at one hole means missing the others. Let your gaze rest near the centre and use peripheral vision to catch movement — peripheral vision is worse at detail and much better at motion, which is exactly the right trade here.
It is the same habit that helps in Whack-a-Mole's cousins on the site: reacting to what appears rather than hunting for it.
A good drill for exam-speed arithmetic
Timed mental arithmetic under mild pressure is close to what a school test actually demands, which is why this makes a better ten-minute drill than it first appears. Hard mode in particular is the closest thing on the site to a Congak paper's pace.
For the full four-operation version without the time pressure of a disappearing mole, the daily challenge at cerdikcerdik.com/math is the place to go next.
Frequently asked questions
Is this a maths game or a reaction game?
Both, and that is the point. The sums are easy enough that anyone can do them given time, so what the game actually measures is whether you can still do them quickly with moles disappearing.
What happens if I hit the wrong mole?
That mole drops back into its hole and nothing else changes. The sum stays on screen and the other moles stay up, so you can still hit the right one and score the point — a wrong hit costs you a moment, not the question.
How long is a game?
Sixty seconds on every difficulty. What changes between them is how many questions fit into that minute — Hard offers well over twice as many chances as Easy.
What age is it suitable for?
Easy mode suits children who are confident adding up to 5, roughly Standard 1. Hard mode is a genuine challenge for adults, since the constraint is time rather than the arithmetic.