How a token search game works
Arctic Shores does not publish a token search task. Its 2026 candidate guide describes six task types: rapid responses to shapes and numbers, abstract patterns, numerical concepts, facial expressions, taps or clicks timed to a moving image, and predictions from feedback. None of them is a box search, so treat Token Search as extra memory practice rather than a task to expect.
In a box search, a set of boxes appears and a token is hidden in one of them. You open boxes until you find it, then the next token is hidden. A box that has held a token never holds another, so the skill is remembering where you have already looked and where tokens have already been.
How to search without repeat errors
A fixed route does most of the remembering for you:
- Pick a starting box and a direction, such as left to right, and use that route for every token.
- Within one search, never reopen a box you have just found empty.
- After each find, mark that box as finished in your head. It will not pay out again.
- Start each new search from the same box, skipping the finished ones.
- As the boxes increase, say the finished positions to yourself (“first, fourth, sixth”) instead of picturing them.
Tips for box search tasks
- Box search tasks are typically scored on errors and search strategy, so slow down as the box count rises.
- The last tokens of each puzzle are where errors pile up, because you must remember almost every finished box.
- If you have an Arctic Shores invitation, spend most of your preparation on the task types it does publish.
What your score means
Arctic Shores has no box-search task, so nothing like Token Search reaches a real report. For the tasks it does run, you get one emailed report covering all of them, split into “dimensions”, each placed on a four-point scale against similar candidates who took the same assessment.
Its candidate guidance page describes a 1 to 10 spectrum per behaviour instead, sent only if your employer chooses. Employers get a separate fit number from 1 to 100 for each candidate, judged against the profile they agreed for the role, and Arctic Shores says there is no single way to pass.
Practise Token Search on CogniPrep
Our Token Search runs five puzzles of 3, 4, 6, 8 and 8 boxes. An opened box shows what is inside for 0.7 seconds, and a puzzle ends once every box has given up a token. There is no clock and speed is not scored. The score out of 100 counts opening boxes that already paid out, reopening a box within one search, and how consistently you start your searches on the 6-box and 8-box puzzles.