Hard enough to matter, never hard enough to quit
A session that's too easy is boring; one that's too hard is discouraging. CogDojo keeps you in the narrow band between them by giving every skill a rating and matching the difficulty to it — every session, automatically.
Every skill has an Elo rating
Elo is the rating system chess and competitive games use to measure skill and create fair matchups. CogDojo borrows it: each of your six cognitive skills carries its own Elo. New ratings start at 1200 and live within a 500–2500 range.
After each session, your rating updates based on how you actually did versus how someone at your current rating was expected to do. Beat the expectation and it rises; fall short and it eases back. The size of the move is capped, so one great — or one rough — session nudges your rating rather than throwing it. Over time it converges on your true level for that skill.
From rating to five difficulty bands
Your current rating maps to one of five difficulty levels. That level sets how a game is generated for you — grid size, pacing, the number of distractors, and which rule variants are in play. The bands:
Foundations
Rating Below 900Gentle introductions. Smaller grids, slower pacing, more time. Where most skills begin.
Building
Rating 900–1300The patterns get a little denser and the clock a little tighter as the basics settle in.
Steady
Rating 1300–1700A real workout. This is where many players spend most of their time once they've warmed up.
Sharp
Rating 1700–2100Demanding pacing and added rules. Reserved for skills you've genuinely built up.
Peak
Rating 2100 and upThe hardest variants we offer. Maximum density, minimum slack. Earned, never handed out.
It reads the room, too
The band isn't set by your rating alone. CogDojo also looks at your recent trend — a run of strong sessions can nudge the next one up a notch before your rating fully catches up, and a string of rough ones can ease it back. The goal is always the same: keep you in the stretch zone, where the challenge is real but the next round still feels worth starting.
Adaptive difficulty is about engagement and fair measurement — keeping practice enjoyable and your ratings meaningful. It's a way to make training stick, not a treatment, and reaching a higher band is an achievement within CogDojo rather than a claim about your everyday abilities.