You look at social media for two hours a day.
Over 1 days,
That's thirty full days. We're not going to tell you what social scrolling does to your brain, because we don't know and neither does anybody else. The only thing we'd say is — why not use some of those hours to solve a problem, or explore the way you think, and see how you feel.
We kept catching ourselves scrolling for twenty minutes looking for something interesting, and not finding it. Solving something difficult, on the other hand, feels good. It may not be improving anyone's mind — we make no claim that it is — but it feels like it's exercising the grey matter, and that seemed a better use of an evening.
That's the whole observation. Not a theory about attention, not a promise about your brain. Just a preference, and the suspicion that other people might share it.
The first rule was to keep only the ones that are genuinely hard. Plenty got cut for being pleasant but trivial. Then came the harder decision, because anything you enjoy, you will grind.
Every game caps out. Not because we ran out of content — because grinding one thing into the ground is the behaviour we're trying not to build. You can start another set if you want to; you just have to decide to, rather than drift into it.
Verbal, numerical, logical, spatial, observation, pattern recognition and lateral thinking. Not a claim about your brain — just the spread we wanted the catalogue to cover.
A circuit pulls a random mix of types, so you can't settle into one pattern and coast. No notifications begging you back. No streak to lose.
That cap costs us the engagement metrics every other app in this category optimises for. We think it's the right call anyway.
— Ricky Chopra, Polson
A real one from Reality Check. No sign-up, no download. It takes about ten seconds and you will probably get it right — the interesting part is knowing why.
BREAKING: Scientists have confirmed that drinking coffee after 2pm permanently rewires your sleep cycle. The study of 12 people found the effect was 100% irreversible. Share before this gets taken down.
The app has hundreds of these, and they get harder. That's the whole idea.
Spot the fake. Spot the bias. Name the culprit. Work out what actually happened.
Question an AI cast, weigh their stories against each other, and name who did it. A whole case, one culprit, no hints.
Spot the fabrication. Learn the tells that make misinformation land — the sample size, the absolute, the urgency.
Mysteries that stay impossible until you drop one hidden assumption, then collapse into obvious.
Back the stat, stake your chips. You state how sure you are, then find out whether that confidence was earned.
Probe the sayings you have never questioned and find the exact point where they quietly stop being true.
Read something long, then answer questions that assume you actually read it. No skimming your way through.
The same event, reported two ways. Find the loaded word, the missing number, the quote that was cut one sentence early.
Not a score. Where you are quick and where you stall, when in the day you are sharpest, which kinds of problem you avoid, and whether you are leaning on hints less than you were a month ago.
We don't target you with it. We don't sell it. We hold no copy of it. We can't even read it.
Your progress lives in your own iCloud, not on a server of ours. Payments are handled entirely by Apple — we never see a card number. There is no advertising identifier in the app, no analytics, and nothing that follows you anywhere else.
It syncs through your own iCloud account, not a database we run. We operate no server for your data and have no way to see inside it — that's how CloudKit works, not something you have to take on trust.
Your progress is in your iCloud, so it's already on your other devices and survives a new phone. Nothing here costs you a year of play.
No ad network, no analytics SDK, no data broker, no advertising identifier. There is nothing in the app that exists to profile you.
Account → Delete account removes your account and its data permanently and revokes your Sign in with Apple token. No email, no waiting.
Every purchase goes through Apple's In-App Purchase. We never receive or store a card number, and refunds are Apple's to give — you don't have to ask us.
No advertising identifier, so no App Tracking Transparency prompt — because there is nothing to ask permission for. What you do here stays here.
The app puts it best on its own screen: an illustration of your effort — not a brain scan.
You never know — you might learn something. Forty-plus games and activities, one five-game circuit free every day forever, and one payment of £7.99 — less than a coffee — for everything else, including the hand-produced premium activities. Nothing renews.
Real screens, not mock-ups.
Over forty games and activities, and one five-game circuit free every single day whether you ever pay us or not — paying just removes the daily limit.
A fresh mix pulled from across the catalogue, every day. Not a trial, not a countdown — this is the free tier and it stays.
Every engine game, plus the premium activities — the hand-produced ones — inside your circuits.
Worked through the lot? Each pack adds hundreds of new rounds. Buy one, buy none — the £7.99 was never a down payment on something else.
Most apps in this category bill you monthly, forever, and stop working when you stop paying. Polson asks for one payment and then leaves you alone.
Prices shown in GBP. The App Store sets its own price in each territory, so yours may differ — Apple shows it in your currency before you pay.
Coming soon to the App Store