Apps &
Experiments

Five thousand stars for where you are standing, right now. Hold the phone up and the sky follows it; drag it around instead if you would rather stay indoors. Phone compasses lie by up to fifteen degrees, so there are two arrows to nudge the whole sky until a star you know lines up.

Sixty seconds, a rack that never runs out, and a hoop that starts moving once you are ahead. How far you flick is how hard, how far across is how wide — and when it travels you have to throw where it is going, because aiming at it is worse than ignoring it.

Eighteen winding arrows inked over the six faces of a cube, each needing five clear cells ahead of it — and ahead runs around the corner onto a face you cannot see. Pull one that snags and it does not stay put: it stops where it jammed, in everyone else's way. Turn the cube before you tap.

One year of a tree that nobody shapes, grown once and draggable to any day in it. A live panel keeps its books — water drawn against what the roots can lift, carbon fixed against what the light and the pores allow, upkeep climbing until by December it has nearly caught what the tree earns. The drawing is only a picture of those numbers. Six knobs sit over the growth rules, none of them a shape setting: move one and the year regrows into something else, a column or a canopy or a thicket on forty legs.

A plant grown a day at a time from a genome you edit — five real genes, each switchable from knockout to overexpressor. Nothing about the shape is drawn by hand: branching falls out of auxin moving down the stem and buds deciding whether to wake. Cut the top off and watch the side shoots take over.

Eighteen layers, fifty-four blocks, and real gravity deciding what happens. Drag one out sideways — a block near the top slides free easily, one near the bottom resists and trails your cursor. Nothing is scripted, including the way it falls.

Mind a junk shop until the odd things start turning up on their own. Ten curios fill the cabinet, and then you choose: open another shop and take your regulars with you, or close down and spend thirty days deciding where each piece goes. Nothing in the cabinet is ever given a price.

Turn each tile until every pipe opening meets another and nothing is left hanging. Joined pipes light up and run together; loose ends stay dim and stop short. Eight boards, five by five up to twelve by twelve, and no timer anywhere.

Twenty-four weeks, one free afternoon each, three people you keep almost talking to. Studying isn't the boring half — nobody lets you get closer than they think you've earned, so every week is a choice between becoming someone and seeing someone.

One room of a house that needs emptying: your grandfather's study, twelve of his things, three trays. Nothing is ever refused — where a thing goes is your call, not the room's, and a few of them have something to say about what you decided.

Swap neighbouring gems to line up three. A clear drops everything above it, and a drop that lands another match scores double, then triple. Four in a row leaves a beam, five leaves a prism — reach the target before the moves run out.

Dip a brush, mix pigments on a virtual palette, and match the reference color — level by level, from first strokes to full mastery.

Hatch and raise Blobby — a Tamagotchi-style creature that gets hungry, grows, and evolves with the care you give it.

Mad-Gab-style card night, digitized — pass the iPad, read the phonetic phrase out loud before the timer runs out. Add your own inside jokes to the Family Deck.

Turn any seed into a cubist portrait, Mondrian grid, Rothko field, or Bauhaus composition — export as SVG or PNG.

Michaelmas 1879, ten years before the Index. A sergeant who does not know the parish cannot read a statement until he knows whose it is. Put every soul under the roof they live beneath — each name belongs to one household and one only, and when you are done one name will be left standing under no roof at all.

A blackmailer’s ledger names no one — every debtor is a phrase. Put a name, a place and an end to nine of them. Get three right together and they seal themselves; no submit button, no scolding.

Ten years on, the nephew keeps his uncle’s habit: no names, only phrases. Thirty-two papers, nine more identities, and one of them is the name he answers to now.

A self-contained Victorian murder case — ten evidence exhibits and one fair-play solution. Read the clues, name the culprit, then break the wax seal.