About Speed Typer
Speed Typer is a 60-second typing test where every word is a country name. Names appear one at a time, from Chad to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and your result is measured in words per minute.
How to play
- Press Start to begin a 60-second test. All 195 country names are shuffled into a list.
- Names are shown in lower case without accents, so you type plain letters. Spaces, hyphens and apostrophes in names such as guinea-bissau or cote d'ivoire must be typed.
- A name is accepted as soon as you have typed it correctly in full, or when you type it followed by a space. Capital letters are ignored.
- Correct letters turn green and mistakes turn red and underlined; the box shows a red border while what you have typed does not match.
- Each completed name adds its length plus one (for the space) to your character count. Words per minute uses the standard rule that 5 characters equal one word.
- Your final score is the characters typed divided by 5, since the test lasts exactly one minute.
Controls
- Type on the keyboard; the input box is focused automatically when the test starts.
- Use Backspace to fix a mistake. The game will not move on until the name is exactly right.
- The next three names are previewed under the current one.
Tips and strategy
- Read ahead using the preview line so your fingers already know the next name when the current one clears.
- You do not need to press space; finishing the last letter is enough, which saves a keystroke per name.
- Long names count for more characters, so do not slow down when one appears. A name like bosnia and herzegovina is worth as much as several short ones.
- Fix errors immediately. A wrong letter early in a name means everything after it is also wrong until you backspace.
- Accuracy beats speed: there is no penalty for mistakes beyond the time they cost, but that time adds up fast.
Background
Typing speed has been measured in words per minute since the days of the typewriter, and the convention that a word is five characters, including spaces, lets results be compared across texts with different word lengths. The QWERTY layout used on most keyboards today comes from the typewriters designed by Christopher Latham Sholes in the 1870s. Country names make an unusual test text because they include rare letter patterns, such as the zh in Kazakhstan or the yrgy in Kyrgyzstan, which break the rhythm of everyday words.
Questions
- Is the WPM shown during the test my final result?
- The live figure is based on time elapsed so far. The final result uses the full 60 seconds, so it can differ slightly from the last number you saw.
- Do I need to type accents?
- No. Names are displayed without accents, so type plain letters, for example sao tome and principe.
- Where is my best score saved?
- Your best words-per-minute result is kept in your browser on this device.