Daily Brains · five colours flash and vanish. Paint them back from memory.
Aftercolor is the colour-memory puzzle in Daily Brains (/daily). Each day everyone gets the same five rounds. A colour is shown for a few seconds and then hidden; you rebuild it from memory with a hue ring and two sliders (saturation and lightness). Each round is scored by how different your colour and the real one look to the human eye, using CIEDE2000, the colour-difference formula used in printing and paint matching.
STORY & LORE
Why it is hard
Colour memory drifts. Most people remember colours as more saturated and more 'typical' than they really were, and a surrounding colour changes how a colour looks. Aftercolor puts both effects to work: the later rounds of the week use afterimages and simultaneous contrast, two well-known effects of human colour vision.
Same palette for everyone
The day's five colours are generated from the puzzle number, so every player in the world gets the same rounds on the same day. Every colour sits on the same whole-number hue/saturation/lightness grid as the controls, so a perfect 10 is always possible.
HOW IT PLAYS
Controls
Drag around the rainbow ring to set the hue. The Saturation slider runs from grey to vivid and the Lightness slider runs from black to white; both tracks redraw live in your current colour. Press Lock it in when it looks right. Keyboard: ← → hue, ↑ ↓ lightness, [ ] saturation (hold Shift for bigger steps), Enter or Space to go.
Round types
Colour: a plain disc. Object: a tinted shape (heart, star, raindrop, leaf, moon, fish, bell or cloud); only the colour matters. Stripes: two or three bands, and you are told which one to paint only after they vanish. Afterimage: stare at a dot on a vivid shape on grey; when it vanishes, paint the ghost, which is the shape's opposite colour (hue turned 180°, same saturation and lightness). In context: a small square on a loud background; paint what the square really was.
Weekly ramp
Monday is Gentle: 5-second looks and single colours only. Each day the look gets shorter and the rounds get trickier, until Sunday is Fiendish: 1.5-second flashes, three-stripe swatches, an afterimage and two illusion rounds. On harder days the colours are also more muted and the stripes sit closer together.
Scoring
Each round scores 10 / (1 + (ΔE/15)²), rounded to one decimal place: 10 for a perfect match, 5 at ΔE 15, about 2.6 at ΔE 25. The best possible day is 50. Each result shows the real colour and yours side by side in one disc. Scoring 20 or more keeps your streak alive. Scoring 9 or more on all five rounds is a perfect day.
No second look
From the moment a colour appears, the round counts as seen. Reloading the page during the flash takes you straight to the paint controls, and your current mix is saved with every change.
Sharing
The share line is spoiler-free: the puzzle number, your total and one square per round (🟩 8+, 🟨 5–7.9, 🟥 under 5), e.g. “🎨 Aftercolor #25 · 41.8/50 🟩🟩🟨🟩🟥”.
THE WEEK
| Day | Level | Look | Rounds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Gentle | 5 s | Colour · Object · Colour · Object · Colour |
| Tuesday | Mild | 4.5 s | Colour · Object · 2 Stripes · Colour · Object |
| Wednesday | Steady | 4 s | Object · Colour · 2 Stripes · Afterimage · Colour |
| Thursday | Tricky | 3.5 s | Object · 2 Stripes · In context · Colour · Afterimage |
| Friday | Sharp | 3 s | Colour · 3 Stripes · In context · Afterimage · Object |
| Saturday | Devious | 2.5 s | Object · 3 Stripes · In context · Afterimage · 3 Stripes |
| Sunday | Fiendish | 1.5 s | In context · 3 Stripes · Afterimage · In context · 3 Stripes |
HOW CLOSE IS CLOSE
| ΔE (CIEDE2000) | Points | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 10.0 | Indistinguishable |
| 2 | 9.8 | Only a trained eye could tell |
| 5 | 9.0 | Close |
| 10 | 6.9 | Right family, wrong shade |
| 15 | 5.0 | Right family, wrong shade |
| 25 | 2.6 | Drifted a long way |
| 40 | 1.2 | A different colour entirely |
REWARDS
| Event | Reward |
|---|---|
| Finish a day with 20+ / 50 | 15 Tickets |
| Perfect day (9+ on every round) | +25 Tickets |
| First Swatch (first day of 20+) | 🎨 Bronze · 10 Tickets |
| Perfect Pitch (for Colour) | 👁️ Silver · 20 Tickets |
| Three Coats (3-day streak) | 🖌️ Bronze · 15 Tickets |
| Full Spectrum (7-day streak) | 🌈 Gold · 40 Tickets |
| Living Colour Chart (30-day streak) | 👑 Legendary · 100 Tickets |
VERSION HISTORY
- Launch version in Daily Brains.
- Five rounds a day: colours, tinted objects, stripes, afterimages and in-context illusions, ramping from Monday (Gentle) to Sunday (Fiendish).
- Hue ring plus saturation/lightness sliders, CIEDE2000 scoring out of 50, side-by-side result discs.
- Streaks, statistics, spoiler-free share line, progress saved on every move.