About this game
T9 hands you a short text message and a twelve-key phone keypad, the way almost everyone typed on a phone for about a decade. There is no letter keyboard. Every press counts and the clock runs from your first press until the message on the little green screen matches exactly.
You can type it two ways, and the difference between them is the whole story of early mobile typing.
- Multi-tap is the manual method. Press 2 once for A, twice for B, three times for C. To type two letters from the same key, such as the L and L in "mall", you wait for the cursor to move on, or press the right arrow on your keyboard (or the star key here) to confirm early.
- T9 predictive is the clever one, and the original version of this page did not have it. You press each key once per letter and a dictionary works out the word. 4-6-6-3 could be good, home, gone or hood, so if the first guess is wrong you press star to cycle to the next.
Textonyms: when T9 guessed wrong
Words that share a key sequence are called textonyms, and they produced some of the most memorable messages of the era. The Traps set is built out of them. The panel beside the phone shows every word in the game's dictionary that matches what you have pressed so far. That dictionary is small, about 640 common words ordered roughly by how often they are used, where a real phone held many thousands, so the exact order of guesses will not always match the phone you remember.
| Keys | Words that share them |
|---|---|
| 63 | of, me |
| 43 | he, if |
| 46 | in, go |
| 66 | on, no |
| 228 | act, cat, bat |
| 2665 | book, cool |
| 4663 | good, home, hood, gone, hoof |
| 5477 | kiss, lips |
How much faster was T9, really?
Researchers measure text entry methods by key presses per character, or KSPC. In a 2002 analysis based on word frequencies in English, I. Scott MacKenzie estimated about 2.03 presses per character for multi-tap and about 1.01 for T9, against 1.0 for a full keyboard. In other words, T9 roughly halved the presses. Your result shows your own presses per character next to the fewest the message needs in each method, so you can see how much of the gap was the method and how much was your thumbs.
Words per minute here uses the usual convention of five characters, spaces included, per word. For comparison, a reasonably quick typist on a full keyboard manages around 40.
How to play
- Choose Multi-tap or T9 predictive, and the Texts or Traps set.
- Press the keys on screen, or use your keyboard's number keys. 0 is space, hash deletes.
- In multi-tap, star confirms a letter early. In T9, star cycles to the next matching word.
- When the screen matches the message exactly, the clock stops and you get your speed, presses per character and a comparison.
- Turn on hints to see which key comes next and how many times to press it.
Questions
What is T9?
A free browser game about phone typing from before touchscreens. You get a short text message and a twelve-key phone keypad, and you type it as fast as you can in either classic multi-tap, where you press a key several times to reach a letter, or real T9 predictive text, where you press each key once and a dictionary guesses the word.
What is the difference between multi-tap and T9?
In multi-tap, the 2 key holds A, B and C, so C takes three presses and you have to pause or press a next key before typing another letter from the same key. T9, short for Text on 9 keys, let you press each key once per letter and used a built-in dictionary to work out which word you meant. When several words share the same key sequence, such as home, good and gone, you press a next key to cycle through them.
What are textonyms?
Words that share the same key sequence on a phone keypad, so T9 cannot tell them apart. Home, good, gone and hood are all 4663. Me and of are both 63, which is why so many people remember accidentally texting 'see you of the weekend'. The Trap set of sentences is built from them, and the side panel shows every match for the keys you have pressed.
How fast is T9 compared with multi-tap?
In I. Scott MacKenzie's 2002 analysis of key presses needed per character of English, multi-tap needed about 2.03 presses per character and T9 about 1.01, close to a full keyboard's 1.0. Your result shows your own presses per character for the sentence you typed, alongside the fewest presses that sentence needs in each mode.
Can I use my keyboard?
Yes. The number keys and number pad act as the phone keys, star and hash work as themselves, Backspace deletes, the right arrow confirms a multi-tap letter early, and Enter starts a new message. On a phone or tablet, tap the on-screen keypad.
Is anything saved?
Your best speed and your recent results for each mode are kept in your browser's local storage, along with your settings, so you can try to beat them next time. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account.
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