Tune sleuth

How to play Tune sleuth

Five melodies a day, played back by your browser one note at a time. You start with the first three notes: press play to hear them, then pick the right title from four options. Guess straight away and you take the full five points. Every extra note you reveal knocks a point off, down to a minimum of one, so there is a real cost to being careful. Get it wrong and the game shows the answer plus a little fact about the tune before moving on. Finish all five and you see your total out of twenty five and whether the streak survived. Everything here is public domain: nursery rhymes, folk tunes and classical themes that have been around for a century or more.

Tips

• Listen for the rhythm as much as the notes, a lot of these tunes are recognisable from the pattern alone
• If two options feel close, one more note is usually enough to split them
• Headphones help, the synth is deliberately plain so the melody carries everything
• Hum along, your ear will finish the phrase before your brain names it

About Tune sleuth

Recognising a song from the first few notes is one of those party tricks everyone can do and nobody can explain. Melodies are stored in memory as shapes, so a handful of intervals is often enough for the whole thing to snap into place. Tune sleuth strips that down to the bare minimum: no lyrics, no instruments, no production, just single notes from a simple synth. Because every melody here is old enough to be public domain, you are competing against tunes your grandparents would also recognise, which makes it a decent game to play with someone else in the room. The daily format keeps it to a two minute habit rather than a rabbit hole.

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