How to Get Better at Simon

Why long sequences feel impossible

Human working memory can typically hold about four to seven items at once — which is exactly why Simon gets hard so fast. A five-flash sequence is comfortable; a twelve-flash one overflows the mental buffer, and the whole thing collapses. The good news is that the limit is not on how much you can remember, but on how many separate things you track. The techniques below all work by packing more into each "slot", and you can practise them in theSimon game.

Technique one: chunking

Chunking is the single most powerful memory tool, and it is how people memorise long phone numbers and card decks. Instead of remembering eight individual flashes — green, red, red, blue, yellow, green, blue, red — you group them: "green-red-red-blue" and "yellow-green-blue-red". Now you are holding two chunks, not eight items, which fits comfortably. As the sequence grows, keep adding to chunks of three or four. The mental effort of grouping is tiny compared with the capacity it buys you.

Technique two: hear the melody

This is the trick that makes Simon uniquely learnable, and it is why the original game had sounds. Each pad plays a distinct tone, so any sequence is also a little melody. Musical memory is remarkably durable — you can recall a tune you have not heard in years — and it engages a different system than remembering a list of colours. Rather than memorising "top-left, bottom-right, top-left", let yourself hum the notes. Very often your fingers will find the next pad because the tune "wants" to continue, even when you cannot consciously recall the colour.

Technique three: narrate it

Saying the sequence to yourself — even silently — adds a second, verbal memory track alongside the visual one. Give the pads short names ("green, red, yellow, blue" or even "one, two, three, four") and rehearse the string under your breath as it plays. The act of speaking rehearses the memory and keeps it fresh through the pause before your turn. Combining verbal narration with the melody is especially strong, because you are now encoding the same sequence three ways at once.

The mental game

Beyond raw technique, long sequences are lost to panic. As the chain gets long, the pressure rises, and a rushed, anxious reproduction is where most mistakes happen — you know the pattern, but you fumble the input. Two habits help. First, reproduce the sequence at a calm, even rhythm; do not race. Second, trust your first instinct on each pad rather than second-guessing, because hesitation corrupts the melody you are following. Treat your turn as playing back a tune you already know, not as recalling a list under exam conditions.

A quick practice routine

• Warm up short. Play a few rounds just to tune into the pads and tones before pushing for a record.
• Chunk from the start. Group even short sequences, so the habit is automatic when they get long.
• Let the sound lead. Focus on the melody rather than staring at positions.
• Breathe on your turn. A single calm breath before replaying a long sequence noticeably cuts mistakes.

The toy that defined an era

Simon launched in 1978 and became one of the defining toys of its decade — a glowing plastic disc that seemed almost futuristic at the time. It was designed by Ralph Baer, a genuine pioneer who also created the first home video game console, and Howard Morrison, and its debut was pure theatre: it was launched at New York's Studio 54 nightclub. The game itself was inspired by an earlier arcade machine called Touch Me, which Baer thought had good ideas but terrible sounds.

That detail matters, because the sounds are what made Simon work. Baer deliberately chose four tones that form a pleasant chord — a bugle call, roughly — so that any sequence sounds musical rather than random. It was an inspired design decision: it made the game more pleasant to hear on repeat, and, crucially, far easier to remember. A toy that could have been an irritating beeping box instead became something people wanted to keep playing.

What Simon reveals about memory

Simon is essentially a live demonstration of a famous piece of psychology. In 1956, George Miller published a paper arguing that human short-term memory holds about "seven, plus or minus two" items — a figure so influential it became one of the most cited findings in the field. Later research refined this downward, suggesting the real limit for genuinely independent items is closer to four. Either way, the implication for Simon is direct: somewhere between four and nine flashes, most people hit a wall.

What lets anyone exceed that wall is the same thing Miller himself identified: chunking. The limit is not on raw information but on the number of separate units you track, so grouping four flashes into one remembered "phrase" effectively multiplies your capacity. This is why phone numbers are written in groups, why musicians remember long pieces as sequences of phrases rather than notes, and why a Simon player who chunks routinely doubles the score of one who does not. The game is a rare case where you can feel a psychological principle working in real time.

Does it actually train your brain?

It is worth being honest about the "brain training" claim, because the science is more nuanced than marketing suggests. Playing Simon reliably makes you better at Simon — that improvement is real and measurable. What research on cognitive training generally finds, though, is that these gains show limited transfer: getting better at one memory task does not automatically improve unrelated everyday memory, like remembering names or where you left your keys.

That is not a reason to dismiss it. What does transfer is the technique: chunking, using rhythm and melody as memory aids, and staying calm under time pressure are genuine strategies that work anywhere you need to hold information briefly — a phone number, a shopping list, a set of directions. Simon is a fun, low-stakes place to practise them until they become automatic. Treat it as a game that teaches useful habits rather than as brain medicine, and it delivers exactly what it promises.

The toy that started at an arcade

Simon was created by Ralph Baer — the engineer often called the father of home video games — together with Howard Morrison, and released by Milton Bradley in 1978. The inspiration came from an Atari arcade machine called Touch Me, which had the same repeat-the-sequence idea but, by Baer's own account, sounded terrible. His key insight was musical: give each pad a pleasant, distinct tone and the game becomes something people want to hear as well as play.

The tones were chosen deliberately as the notes of an A-major chord, so any sequence sounds vaguely musical rather than random and jarring. That decision is why the game works: it accidentally handed players a powerful memory aid, turning an abstract list of colours into a little tune. Launched at New York's Studio 54 nightclub, the glowing disc became a cultural icon of the era and has never really gone out of production. Nearly fifty years later, the design is essentially unimproved — a rare case of a game arriving fully formed.

What the science says about your limit

The reason Simon gets hard so abruptly has a name. In 1956 the psychologist George Miller published a famous paper proposing that people can hold about seven items, plus or minus two, in immediate memory. Later research refined that number downward — modern estimates put pure working-memory capacity closer to four chunks — but the essential finding holds: there is a hard ceiling, and it is much lower than people expect.

Crucially, Miller's insight was that the limit applies to chunks, not raw items. A chunk can be as small as one colour or as large as a whole memorised group, which is why chunking multiplies your effective capacity without changing your underlying memory at all. There is also a well-documented recency and primacy effect: people reliably remember the start and end of a sequence better than the middle. That maps directly onto Simon — if you are dropping a sequence, it is usually a flash in the middle. Knowing that, you can consciously give extra rehearsal to the middle chunk, which is exactly the kind of targeted fix that raises scores.

A structured practice routine

Most people play Simon by simply trying again and hoping. A little structure produces much faster improvement, because you are training a specific skill rather than repeating a habit.

Two more habits help. First, don't stare at the pads — a soft focus on the middle of the board lets peripheral vision catch each flash, which is faster and less tiring than tracking with your eyes. Second, keep sessions short. Working memory degrades quickly with fatigue, so five focused attempts will beat twenty tired ones, and your best scores will almost always come early in a session rather than after grinding.

Does it actually make you sharper?

It is worth being honest about the "brain training" claim. Research on working-memory games consistently finds strong practice effects — you get markedly better at the trained task — but weak evidence of transfer to unrelated abilities like general intelligence or everyday memory. Playing a lot of Simon will make you very good at Simon; it will not reliably make you better at remembering shopping lists.

What it genuinely offers is a clean, honest measure of focused attention in the moment, and real practice at the techniques — chunking, rehearsal, verbal encoding — which absolutely do transfer, because they are strategies rather than raw capacity. Learn to chunk here and you will find yourself chunking a phone number or a door code without thinking about it. That is a modest but real benefit, and it comes wrapped in a game you will actually keep playing.

Why you drop the sequence

When a run ends, it is almost never because your memory simply "ran out." Recognising which of the three common failures happened tells you what to fix next round.

• You lost the middle. The most frequent failure, and a direct consequence of the primacy-recency effect — the start and end stick, the middle evaporates. Fix: give the middle chunk an extra silent rehearsal during the pause before your turn.
• You knew it but fumbled the input. The pattern was there and your fingers got ahead of it. Fix: reproduce at a deliberate, even tempo rather than racing; speed earns nothing here.
• You second-guessed yourself. You started correctly, doubted a pad, and the doubt destroyed the melody. Fix: commit to the first instinct — hesitation corrupts recall far more often than it rescues it.

Notice that only the first of these is really about memory at all. The other two are about execution and nerve, which is why calm players consistently outscore anxious ones at the same level of recall. If you find your best rounds collapsing at the same number every time, it is usually worth working on the pause-and-breathe habit before trying to memorise harder.

Simon is a genuine workout for working memory, and the same tricks that raise your score — chunking, melody, narration — are the ones memory athletes use for far harder feats. Put them to work in theSimon game, and watch your best round climb as the techniques become second nature.