Whack A Mole: combos, golden moles and how fast it gets

Whack A Mole is the fairground classic in a short form: one round lasts 45 seconds, moles pop out of nine holes, and you tap them before they duck back down. You can also play it in your browser.

Points and combos

• A brown mole is worth 1 point.
• A golden mole is worth 3. Roughly one mole in nine is golden.
• Hits close together build a combo. You have 1.4 seconds after each hit to land the next one, or the combo resets.

From the third hit in a combo on, every hit earns a bonus: +1 for hits 3 to 5, +2 for hits 6 to 8, +3 for hits 9 to 11, and so on. A long combo is worth more than a few golden moles, so keeping the rhythm matters most. Tapping an empty hole only plays a sound; it doesn't cost points and doesn't break the combo.

The pace follows your score

There is no fixed difficulty. Your level goes up by one for every 8 points you score (level 2 at 8 points, level 5 at 32), and every level makes the moles faster in two ways:

| Level | A mole stays up | Time between new moles | |---|---|---| | 1 | about 1.1 s | about 0.9 s | | 5 | 0.8 s | 0.65 s | | 10 | 0.45 s | 0.35 s | | 11 and up | 0.38 s | 0.35 s |

So the better you play, the harder the round gets. Near the end of a strong round, moles appear faster than they disappear, and several holes are busy at once.

Quick tips

• Rhythm beats reach: hit the nearest mole first rather than chasing a golden one across the board and losing the combo.
• Use both hands on a phone or tablet, one for each side of the board.
• Don't worry about missed taps; only the 1.4-second gap breaks a combo.

The game saves your best score on your device. More on the Whack A Mole page, or play now.