Intuition Check

Intuition

What intuition is

Intuition is knowing something without being able to say how you know it: a hunch, a gut feeling, a sudden certainty.

Psychologists describe one kind of it well — experience working faster than thought. Someone who has done a thing many times notices a pattern before they can put it into words: the feeling comes first, the words later.¹

Many people also describe a second kind: knowing something that no experience could have told them — who is calling before the phone shows a name, or which card lies face down. Whether this kind exists is debated in science.²³ This second kind is what the app lets you test, with values chosen at random.

How it can show up

Many people know moments like these:

• You think of someone, and a moment later they call.
• You pick up the phone to call a friend, and it rings in your hand — it is that friend.
• You wake up a couple of minutes before the alarm goes off.
• You know who is calling before you look at the screen.
• You remember someone you haven't seen for a long time, and they call that same day.
• Your first impression of a person turns out to be right.
• The answer to a problem comes by itself — in the morning, in the shower, on a walk.
• You feel someone looking at you, turn around, and someone is.

In telephone surveys of randomly chosen people in England and in California, between 65% and 78% said they had called someone who said they had just been about to call them, and 47–49% said they had known who was calling with nothing to go on.⁴⁵ Most adults believe they can feel when someone they can't see is looking at them.⁶

Some of these have a known explanation. The body can keep track of the time you expect to wake: in one experiment, a hormone that prepares the body for waking began to rise about an hour before the time people had been told they would be woken.⁷ A pause can help with a problem: across many experiments, people solved problems better after setting them aside for a while,⁸ and in one study a night's sleep more than doubled the share of people who found a hidden rule that made a task faster to solve.⁹ And a first impression can be accurate: strangers who watched a teacher for 30 seconds in all, with the sound off, rated them much as the teacher's students did at the end of the term.¹⁰

Once, twice — or again and again

Once or twice, a coincidence like this is easy to put down to chance. When it happens again and again, it is natural to wonder whether there is more to it.

Memory is a poor counter here. It keeps the times the phone rang and forgets the many times you thought of someone and nothing happened. And with enough days, people and thoughts, striking coincidences are bound to happen now and then.¹¹

That is why it helps to count. In this app, the chance of guessing right by luck is known exactly: it depends only on how many values can be drawn. The statistics show whether your results stay within what chance would give or depart from it — see Reading your results.

Intuition in everyday life

Feelings and signals from the body take part in many decisions. People who simply chose the poster they liked were more satisfied with it three weeks later than people who had first been asked to list their reasons for liking or disliking each one.¹² In another experiment, people played a card game with four decks: two decks paid off over time and two lost, but the players weren't told which. The body reacted before each pick, and these signals leaned different ways in different people: on the whole, towards the winning decks for some and towards the losing decks for others. The researchers gauged how well each person sensed their body's signals by how accurately they could feel their own heartbeat. The more accurate that feeling, the more closely the person's choices followed the body's signals — for better or for worse.¹³

Intuition is most reliable where there are real patterns to lean on and quick, clear feedback. A strong feeling of certainty is not, on its own, a sign of being right.¹

So being in good contact with your intuition means two things: noticing it and learning when it can be trusted. To learn when it can be trusted, note your state as you play: the statistics then compare your rounds by state and by time of day, so you can see when you do better. See Your state.

Is there more to it?

Science has not settled whether people can know what no experience could tell them. In 2018 a review in the main journal of the American Psychological Association concluded that the evidence for such effects is about as strong as for findings accepted in psychology.² A reply in the same journal argued that such effects are impossible and that the results must have other causes.³ The question stays open, and the app lets you look at it with your own rounds.

How the app works

A round

Pick a guess set — cards, numbers or a set of pictures — and try to sense a value before it is shown. Then reveal it and see whether you were right. The app counts your hits and compares them with what pure chance would give.

Passive and active modes

The app has two modes:

• Passive intuition — the value is already chosen and hidden. You try to read what it is.
• Active intuition — nothing is chosen until you reveal the value. You try to will a value into being.

The statistics count the two modes separately, so you can see which one suits you better.

Three ways to play

The switchers at the top of the main view set the play style and the mode. The same choices are in Settings → Play style and mode.

One by one

One value at a time. Tap to reveal it, tap again to hide it, then reveal the next one. When Reveal without hiding is on in Settings → One by one, each tap shows the next value straight away. Show hint adds a line of guidance under the value.

With the guess tracking Method set to Enter your guess — as it is at first — the app asks for your guess before each reveal and scores the round itself. See What gets recorded.

Quick pick

All the values of the set are laid out in one grid. Each tap is a round of its own. In active mode the value is drawn at the moment you tap; in passive mode it is drawn in advance, straight after your previous tap. A hit can be marked with a green flash and a buzz.

Number sets with more than 1,000 values have no grid: narrow the range in the set's settings, or play One by one.

Series

In active mode, choose the value you want, will it and tap it: the app draws a series of values and counts how many of them match the one you tapped. A series can be 2 to 12 draws long, or 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, 1 million or 10 million. You set the length on the main view. In Settings → Series, the Series time slider spreads the draws over up to 10 seconds; at zero there are no pauses. Each series goes into the statistics as one entry.

Choosing Series switches the mode to active intuition.

Cards and numbers

A card set uses a deck of 36 or 52 cards, with or without jokers. A number set uses numbers of up to 9 digits — you choose the maximum number of digits. You change both in the guess set's settings view: on the main view, tap the gear beside the set switcher.

Clear view

Touch and hold anywhere on the main view to hide the switchers, the toolbar, the state bar and the hint. Touch and hold again to bring them back. The round counts and the result stay visible.

In Settings → Appearance and feedback, under Clear view, Show button adds an eye button to the toolbar — tap it to turn clear view on — and Remember clear view keeps clear view on between launches.

Round counts

The main view can show how many rounds you have played and how you are doing: one count and one result for each combination of mode and play style, with a button that resets the count and clears the result. Switching to another guess set also resets all the counts and results.

To keep the round counts and results between launches, turn on Save round counts and results in Settings → Statistics. It is available while Save statistics on device is on.

Guess sets

A guess set is what you guess from: cards, numbers or a set of pictures. At first the main view shows only Numbers and Cards. You can add the other sets that come with the app by tapping beside the set switcher on the main view.

The set switcher

The switcher at the top of the main view shows your guess sets. With the default Switcher style it shows buttons when it has up to three sets to show, and a drop-down menu instead once it has more.

Each set has its own Use switch. A set with this switch off is offered nowhere — not in the set switcher on the main view, not in the partner game, not in the statistics — but it stays in your list of sets in Settings → Guess sets → Manage guess sets, and turning it back on brings its statistics back.

The button beside the set switcher opens the add-set view: it lists the extra sets that come with the app, ready to be added to the main view (it also has a button for creating an empty set, to which you can later add your own pictures). The gear button beside the set switcher opens the settings of the currently selected set. Both buttons can be hidden in Settings → Guess sets with Show add-set button and Show set settings button.

Ready-made sets

Tap beside the set switcher on the main view — or open Settings → Guess sets → Manage guess sets, tap and choose Ready-made sets. Open a set and tap Add to my guess sets.

The set you add is your own copy: you can rename it, reorder its pictures, leave some of them out of the game, play it with a partner or send it to someone.

A set from your own pictures

From the main view: tap beside the switcher, then Empty image set below the ready-made sets. Keep the name My images or type another and tap Create. The app switches to the new set and opens it.

Or open Settings → Guess sets → Manage guess sets, tap and choose Empty image set, then name the set and tap Create. The new set opens.

Inside the set, tap and add pictures from Photos or Files — several at a time — or take them one by one with the Camera.

Order, layout and what is in play

In the set's own view, Arrange lets you drag the pictures into a new order and choose Images per row, Alignment and Scale to fit for the grid.

Touch and hold a picture for more actions:

• Don't use in game keeps the picture in the set, but it is never drawn. Use in game brings it back.
• Mark as “?” placeholder shows that picture while a value is still hidden in One by one. It is never drawn itself. A set can have only one “?” placeholder.

Renaming and deleting

The set's name is the first field in its view. In ready-made sets, editing it changes the name in the app's current language; the names in other languages are under Names by language.

To delete a set, swipe it in your list of sets in Settings → Guess sets → Manage guess sets, or touch and hold it, and choose Delete. The app asks first. The set's statistics are deleted with it.

Sending sets

Send a set

A set of your own pictures can travel as a single file with the extension .guesset. The file holds the pictures, their order, the layout and the set's names, as well as which pictures are in play and which is the “?” placeholder. Cards and Numbers are built into the app and can't be sent.

1. Open Settings → Guess sets → Manage guess sets.
2. Touch and hold the set and choose Export…. The share button inside the set does the same.
3. Choose how to send it: Mail, Messages, AirDrop, Files or another app.

To play a set with someone nearby you don't need a file: see Playing with your own pictures.

Open a set someone sent you

Tap a .guesset file in Mail, Messages or Files, or accept one sent by AirDrop, and open it with Intuition Check. It becomes your own separate copy and appears at the end of your list and in the switcher.

A file already saved on the device can also be imported from inside the app: in Settings → Guess sets → Manage guess sets, tap and choose Import from file.

Partner game

How it works

Two devices play together: one person picks a value, the other tries to guess it. The devices talk only to each other (device to device when they are close, or over a shared Wi‑Fi network). Partner-game rounds don't go into the statistics.

The connection

Turn on Wi‑Fi on both devices. On the same Wi‑Fi network the connection works best, and the devices can then be anywhere on it. With no shared network they connect device to device — keep them close together.

The devices look for each other only while the partner game is open on both of them.

Start

1. On both devices, open the partner game: tap the two-person button in the toolbar of the main view, or tap Open partner game in Settings → Partner game. If the button isn't there, turn on Show partner game button in Settings → Partner game.
2. Each device shows Looking for a partner nearby…, then the other device under Seen nearby:. They connect by themselves.

The first time, your device asks whether the app may find devices on your local network. Allow it: otherwise the devices can't find each other.

A round

1. Under Play with:, pick what to play with — any of your guess sets in use.
2. Choose a role: I'll choose a card (or a number, or an image) or I'll try to guess. Your partner gets the other role.
3. The chooser picks a value, the guesser makes a guess. Both devices then show the chosen and the guessed value, with Correct! or Not this time.
4. Play again takes you both back to the first step, to pick what to play with and the roles for the next round.

Playing with your own pictures

When you play with one of your picture sets, your partner is asked to Download it first, unless they already have the same set. Their copy is used only in the partner game and never changes their own sets. Only the pictures they don't have yet are sent.

With Keep received image sets on in Settings → Partner game, the next game with the same partner starts without waiting. With it off, received sets are deleted when you leave the partner game. Received sets are listed in Settings → Guess sets → Manage guess sets under Received from partner, where Add to my guess sets makes a copy that is fully yours.

Your partner's name

On iPhone and iPad, apps see only a general device name such as “iPhone”, so two devices can look the same. Once you are connected, tap the pencil next to your partner's name and type a name of your choice. It is shown only on your device.

If the devices don't find each other

• Open the partner game on both devices, with Wi‑Fi on.
• Put both devices on the same Wi‑Fi network if you can; otherwise keep them close together.
• Guest and public networks — in hotels, cafés, offices — often block traffic between devices. Try another network, or no network at all with the devices side by side.
• If you declined the local network request, turn access back on in the Settings app: Privacy & Security → Local Network, then switch on Intuition Check.
• If a device appears under Seen nearby: but never connects, leave the partner game on both devices and open it again: the search starts afresh.
• Only two devices play together at a time. A third one keeps looking until one of the pair leaves.

Statistics

What gets recorded

Quick pick and Series always record your rounds. One by one records them according to the Method setting under Guess tracking in Settings → One by one:

• Enter your guess — the default. You pick your guess before the reveal, and the app scores the round.
• Mark yourself — after each reveal, tap ✓ or ✗. A reveal you skip without marking isn't counted.
• Off — One by one records nothing.

A guess set with only one possible value records nothing. Partner-game rounds are never recorded.

Looking at your statistics

Tap the statistics button in the toolbar of the main view, or tap View statistics in Settings → Statistics. The statistics open for the guess set, play style and mode you are playing. The filters at the top narrow them by Period, Guess set, Play style, Mode and — while you note your state — State.

Sections you don't need can be switched off in the statistics settings view — open it with the settings button in the statistics view, or from the main view through Settings → Statistics.

What the figures mean: Reading your results.

Keeping your statistics

At first, statistics are kept in memory only, for the current session: they are cleared when the app quits, including when iOS closes it in the background. To keep them, turn on Save statistics on device — at the top of the statistics view or in Settings → Statistics. The rounds of the current session are saved too. Rounds from earlier app sessions that were never saved can't be brought back.

Turning the switch off deletes the saved statistics. The app asks first, with Stop saving statistics?; after you tap Delete saved statistics, only the rounds played since the app was last opened remain, and only in memory: they are gone once the app is closed. This can't be undone.

Clearing

At the bottom of the statistics view:

• Clear all statistics for “…” — all statistics recorded with the guess set picked in the filter.
• Delete the filtered statistic records (count: …) — only the records the filters show.
• Clear all statistics — everything.

The app asks you to confirm each of these deletions, and none can be undone.

Export

Tap the share button in the toolbar of the statistics view, then Export statistics to a text file. The file is a table (CSV) of exactly the records your filters show: one row per round, or one per series in the Series play style. Spreadsheet apps such as Numbers can open it. You may also find it useful to show this file to your AI assistant and ask, for example: “In what circumstances does my intuition seem to work better or worse?”

Reading your results

The statistics don't just count hits. They compare your results with what random guessing would score with the same number of possible values, and say in plain words whether you are ahead of chance, behind it or in line with it.

Your result and chance

Under Correct guesses, Your result stands beside Random would get. The same 30% can mean opposite things: with 3 possible values, random guessing gets about 33%, so 30% is a little below chance; with a 52-card deck it gets about 2%, so 30% is far above it. The chance figure uses each round's own number of possible values.

The verdict

The app gives a verdict: from Consistent with chance through slightly and notably above or below chance, up to Far above chance or Far below chance. It also says how rare such a result would be for random guessing, for example “about 1 in 300 times”.

When rounds are few, the results swing widely by chance alone. So the verdict grows steadier with each new round.

Passive and active intuition compared

When you have rounds in both modes, Passive vs active intuition shows the hits and the hit rate of each, so you can see which one suits you better. It is not shown for Series.

Best streaks

Best streaks lists your longest runs of correct guesses in a row, with the day and time and the state you had noted. A pause longer than Max pause between rounds — you set it in that section — ends a streak, and so does a change of your noted state.

Over time

Hit rate over time draws your daily hit rate once you have rounds on two different days. By time of day shows the morning, afternoon, evening and night separately.

Values

When the statistics are shown for a single guess set with up to 100 values, they list the values you guessed right most often and the values you pick as your guess most and least often — including values you never pick, once you have made as many guesses as the set has values.

People often lean towards some values and avoid others, and some values may be guessed right more often than others.

Results can shift

Your results may change with your state and your circumstances. None of the following is a settled fact — they are possibilities worth noticing as you play:

• Your state. You might do differently just after waking or late at night, rested or tired, calm or stressed. Note your state as you play, and the statistics compare your rounds by state and by time of day.
• Confidence. Feeling sure of yourself, or full of doubt, could line up with how you score.
• Below chance counts too. Guessing right noticeably less often than chance would predict is also a departure from chance. One reading is that intuition is working against you at that moment, rather than that nothing is happening.
• Values. You might guess some values right far more often than others, and some you might never get right at all, even though you pick them just as often as the rest.

What the numbers can tell

The app can tell you whether your results depart from pure chance — never why, even when the reason seems obvious from the data. Treat the figures as something to explore, not as a fixed measure of yourself. See also Intuition.

Your state

The state bar

The bar on the main view lets you note how you are right now: Rested or Tired, Calm or Stressed, Confident or Doubtful, Focused or Scattered, your mood, and circumstances such as Just woke up, After coffee or After exercise. What you note is recorded with every round you play from then on, until you change it or it is forgotten.

The statistics then compare your rounds by state and by time of day, and each streak shows the state you had noted. See Results can shift.

When it is forgotten

Reset noted state in Settings → Your state decides:

• When the app starts — the default. The next launch starts with nothing noted.
• After a pause — forgotten once you haven't played for longer than the Pause you choose, from 15 minutes to 1 day.
• Never — kept until you change it.

Your own states

Settings → Your state → Manage states lets you rename, reorder, add and hide states, add axes of your own and switch an axis off with its own Use switch: a switched-off axis leaves the state bar, new rounds don't record it and the statistics leave it out.

To remove the bar altogether, turn off Note your state during rounds; then no state is recorded at all.

The bar is hidden when clear view is on, and in One by one when guess tracking is off.

Appearance and features

Themes

Settings → Appearance and feedback has four themes — Sand, Ocean, Forest and Dusk — each with a light and a dark version. Appearance offers Light, Dark and System; with System the app follows your device's setting and switches along with it. The theme also colours the playing cards and most of the ready-made pictures.

Feedback

Under Hit feedback, Vibrate and Animate mark a correct guess with a buzz and a green flash; either can be turned off. They work in Quick pick for every tap, in Series when every draw of a series hits, and in One by one when you enter your guess before the reveal. A miss gets neither the buzz nor the flash. Vibration also needs System Haptics on in the Settings app, under Sounds & Haptics.

Pulse animation on tap gives a brief pulse to the cell you tap in Quick pick and Series, and to the value you reveal in One by one when you mark rounds yourself or don't track them.

An uncluttered main view

Almost everything on the main view can be hidden. Each switch is in the Settings view it belongs to:

• Settings → Play style and mode: two Show switcher switches, one for the play style and one for the mode.
• Settings → Guess sets: Show switcher, Show add-set button, Show set settings button.
• Settings → Quick pick: Show grid options button.
• Settings → One by one: Show hint.
• Settings → Series: Show series length on main view, Show series time on main view, Show grid options button (the same switch as in Settings → Quick pick).
• Settings → Your state: Note your state during rounds.
• Settings → Statistics: Show statistics button.
• Settings → Partner game: Show partner game button.
• The settings of each play style (Quick pick, One by one, Series): Show rounds played, Show Results switch, Show result.

To take one guess set off the switcher, turn off Use in that set's settings; the set then leaves the partner game and the statistics too. Turning on clear view hides most of the main view's elements at once.

Features

Settings → Features has a switch for Series play style and one for Round counts and results on the main view. Switched off, a feature leaves the main view and Settings.

Language

Settings → Language lets you set the app's language independently of your device's language, and it sets how numbers and dates are written. Under Suggested Languages, the list shows the system language first, then each of your device's languages that the app offers, in the order set on your device; all other languages follow under Other Languages. When the new language reads in the other direction, close the app and open it again after switching (the writing direction switches correctly only after a restart).

Below the Language row in Settings is the Show hints in Settings switch; it shows or hides the explanations under the settings.

Free hour and subscription

The free hour

The app is free to download and includes one hour of in-app time to try everything in it. The hour is counted only while the app is open on the screen, and it adds up across all your sessions — no clock runs while the app is closed or in the background.

When the hour is used up, the subscription view opens by itself. If that wasn't enough time to decide about subscribing, you can take more: Reset the free hour gives you another hour, up to 3 times — 4 hours of free time in all.

The subscription

To keep using the app after that, there is a subscription with two plans, Monthly and Yearly. The subscription supports Family Sharing.

Subscribe

Open Settings → Subscription → Subscribe.

Manage or cancel

Subscriptions are billed by Apple. Settings → Subscription → Manage subscription takes you to yours. The app's subscription can also be managed the standard way, through your Apple Account's subscriptions in your device's settings. Cancelling a subscription stops future automatic renewals, but you keep access until the current period ends.

A monthly subscriber can move to the yearly plan with Settings → Subscription → Switch to yearly plan.

Refunds

Refunds are handled by Apple: request one at reportaproblem.apple.com. We have no access to your payment details and can't issue a refund ourselves — but do write to us as well if something went wrong, because that is the only way we find out about it.

Restore a purchase

On a new device, open Settings → Subscription → Subscribe and tap Restore purchases. This also brings back a subscription that a family member shares with you. Use the Apple Account that subscribed, or one in the same family group.

Your data

In short

There are no accounts and no servers. The app doesn't send your data to us or to any other company. The partner game exchanges data only with the other device — over a Wi‑Fi network both devices share, or device to device when they are close together.

Where it is kept

Your settings, your guess sets — including the pictures you add — and your list of states are stored on your device, in the app's own storage. Until you turn on Save statistics on device, statistics are held only in memory while the app is running.

Like any other app's data, all of this goes into your device's backups.

The app contains no analytics and no crash reporting.

When you write to us

Email you send us is ordinary correspondence: we keep it only as long as it takes to answer you.

All the details are in the Privacy Policy.