Fingerjig

June 17, 2007 11:02 AM

Fingerjigis a six minute typing game that pulls random words from a large dictionary (and during one section, random letters). I like it because it plays cool percussion hits when you make a mistake, and because sections of it test your left hand and right hand separately. (via)
posted by Kwine (50 comments total)

Cool game. Makes typing *almost* fun.
posted by misha at 11:19 AM on June 17, 2007

Good find, thanks.

misha sums it up pretty well; I bet playing this for ten minutes a day will improve my typing a lot.
posted by interrobang at 11:23 AM on June 17, 2007

396,955 best I can do.
posted by HyperBlue at 11:26 AM on June 17, 2007

Too bad it doesn't include numbers, capitalization and punctuation marks. I like the right hand vs. left hand part though.
posted by HyperBlue at 11:27 AM on June 17, 2007

~2,000,000. It would be nice to preview the next word so you didn't have to pause between words. I have a special place in my heart for typing games -- Type! was the first video game I ever played.
posted by one_bean at 11:31 AM on June 17, 2007

that was more fun that typing deserves to be. I'm going to report typing for "putting on airs."
posted by shmegegge at 11:35 AM on June 17, 2007

1,160,502 (rank 39) on first try.

fun test, and intelligently designed. Do errors reduce your score?
posted by spacediver at 11:38 AM on June 17, 2007

2,219,931 - says I'm number 5 on the high score list. I'll come back in about an hour and try again; I was just kind of nodding off and feel like I could do much better if I were more alert.
posted by Wolfdog at 11:40 AM on June 17, 2007

579,381 on first try. I didn't appreciate how the letters blocked the view of the word, or the fact that the word was shaking up and down. Still fun though.
posted by furtive at 11:40 AM on June 17, 2007

k just tested - seems that it does reduce score
posted by spacediver at 11:40 AM on June 17, 2007

2,354,747 (rank 5)
posted by rxrfrx at 11:53 AM on June 17, 2007

Man, my eyes hurt from that now.
posted by King Bee at 11:56 AM on June 17, 2007

684,000. Damn, those are some impressive scores above!
posted by gfrobe at 11:59 AM on June 17, 2007

This is awesome. I didn't do that well but I will definitely use this as a resource for practice.
posted by inconsequentialist at 12:02 PM on June 17, 2007

712,161. The biggest problem I ran into was starting off; I don't know if I wasn't hitting the first key hard enough, or if I was too early, but lots of times I'd miss the first letter but get halfway through the word before I realized it. (The letters from the previous word flying right in front of the current word didn't help.)
posted by Godbert at 12:17 PM on June 17, 2007

767,470
posted by matty at 12:18 PM on June 17, 2007

Intersting to see how my typing performance drops in that sort of environment. I type at around 80 WPM in real life, but scored around 45 or so on the game. Part of that is the error penalty, I do make quite a few typos (that autocorrect function in most word processors is fantastic).

My speed is massively better for words I know how to spell, worse I notice that I type the word the way I *think* its spelled, and rack up a lot of typos before I can stop myself after the error noise happens.

Fun game.

Oh, and ~650,000.
posted by sotonohito at 12:21 PM on June 17, 2007

The single-handed words killed me: my fingers were so floaty from typing each letter that I lost the sense of where the home row was, and started flubbing some of them. The longer words using both hands were much, much easier.

Also, I was interested to find out that the letter "b" is supposed to be a left-hand letter: I always type it with my right hand.
posted by Bugbread at 12:23 PM on June 17, 2007

I got my score from ~500,000 to ~800,000 by looking at the word and then looking down at the keyboard while I typed. I don't have to look for the letter I need next, but looking at my hands told me if they were straying away from the position they should be at.
posted by Bugbread at 12:32 PM on June 17, 2007

556,097 - I'm going to try this later when I'm not using my laptop.
posted by threetoed at 12:36 PM on June 17, 2007

1,283,600 ... I was somewhat upset at my first round because I didn't even make the posted average. Only then did I realize the scores were summed across all the rounds. d'oh.

D'oh ... just outside the top 50. time to retest .....
posted by devbrain at 12:52 PM on June 17, 2007

1,325,545

I don't use the touch method, and this test made my shortcomings painfully obvious. I flubbed *a lot*
posted by flippant at 12:55 PM on June 17, 2007

~808,000. WITH TWO FINGERS.

Maybe one of these days I should actually learn how to type.
posted by chrominance at 1:03 PM on June 17, 2007 [1 favorite]

I typed electroencephalograph a lot; twice in a row at one point. A cool million on one try, on a dvorak keyboard (thankfully it's mostly English text), so I didn't get the independent hand workout.
posted by rlk at 1:25 PM on June 17, 2007

Also, I was interested to find out that the letter "b" is supposed to be a left-hand letter: I always type it with my right hand.
posted by bugbread at 12:23 PM on June 17

*tries it*

Yikes, that's just weird, nugnread.
posted by the other side at 1:27 PM on June 17, 2007

About 869,000. Fun, but I find that the fading of the finished word is sometimes a real hindrance to seeing what the next word is, and that I do better with the sound off. Also, I'm much better with my left hand than my right for some reason.
posted by aaronetc at 1:52 PM on June 17, 2007

It would be nice if it had some sort of stats like most frequently missed letter or combination. But fun. I'm averaging about 1.1 -1.2 mil.
posted by papakwanz at 2:12 PM on June 17, 2007

1,138,827 =)
posted by alona at 2:18 PM on June 17, 2007

Also, I was interested to find out that the letter "b" is supposed to be a left-hand letter: I always type it with my right hand.
posted by bugbread at 12:23 PM on June 17
Hey! Me too!
posted by alona at 2:22 PM on June 17, 2007

I typed professionally for a couple years and only got 847,000. At peak speed I could do over 100wpm.

This isn't really a typing test; typing is about phrases and reading ahead. Between the letters obscuring the word (which looks cool, but is really stupid design), and the fact that only one word shows at a time, what's getting tested here isn't really typing speed. It's more... how fast you can spell tough words.

Reasonably fun, but speaking as someone who did this to eat, it's a lousy test. :)
posted by Malor at 2:31 PM on June 17, 2007

Let me append: this test involves a lot of thinking. Real typing involves none at all; it's perfectly possible to type something without reading it. It goes in your eyes and out your fingers far faster than you can think. You CAN read it if you wish, but it's entirely optional, and will slow you down a hair.
posted by Malor at 2:33 PM on June 17, 2007

Fun and diverting, but not much more than that.
posted by christopherious at 2:39 PM on June 17, 2007

65,782.

It took me about a minute to type this comment, btw.
posted by maryh at 2:42 PM on June 17, 2007

Malor is right about how little this resembles "real typing" or competitive typing the way it is usually implemented, the letters obscuring the word (this is especially annoying on the single-letter round) and so on. Also dead on about the importance of not thinking about things when typing.

I still have the high score (well, sort of) for the time being, though.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:20 PM on June 17, 2007

I'm right-handed, but I did much better on the left-only test than the right-only. Typing with just my right hand was weirdly straining. Lefty was easy and I didn't make a single mistake. Huh!
posted by moonmilk at 3:25 PM on June 17, 2007

Solo right vs. left hand: because fingers 3-4-5 in the bottom row and 5 in the home row are unused for the right hand, and all the vowels are in the top row, you get a much higher fraction of awkward combinations with the same finger travelling between rows.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:35 PM on June 17, 2007

3,768,194. Bring it.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:17 PM on June 17, 2007

1,024,382 I win!
posted by thirteenkiller at 4:55 PM on June 17, 2007

Also, I was interested to find out that the letter "b" is supposed to be a left-hand letter: I always type it with my right hand.

Me too! I had to pause for that one.

Maryh: Did you only do the first test?

I got just under the average. But it's interesting to note the trouble I had with this test on the keyboard I'm using. It's the first time I've ever used it and the keys are at least 50% smaller than my normal keys and my fingers kept on traveling to the key next to the one I needed. I'd like to see how I go on my usual keyboard when I get my lappy back.

The flying letters were shit, also.
posted by liquorice at 5:13 PM on June 17, 2007

1,716,123

Stupid flying letters. I feel dizzy.
posted by who squared at 6:14 PM on June 17, 2007

Thanks, wolfdog; that makes a lot of sense. I thought I'd have to come up with some crazy explanation based on left brain/right brain stuff or tiny goblins living in my fingers.
posted by moonmilk at 7:36 PM on June 17, 2007

How many of the millionaires have DVORAK key layouts, I'm wondering?
posted by Ian.I.Am at 7:44 PM on June 17, 2007

Okay, this thing is uber cool. I make my living as a transcriptionist and while it really doesnt resemble regular typing at all, it's still a lot of fun, and great practice for accuracy.

Thanks!
posted by perilous at 7:50 PM on June 17, 2007

666,703 ...this time while sitting upright instead of lying down in bed. Yay!

Nothing compared to the rest of the MeFi's with their awesomeness, though.
posted by liquorice at 8:27 PM on June 17, 2007

No typing test should include the word "gonadectomy." That cost me points just because of mental imagery.
posted by Quonab at 9:07 PM on June 17, 2007

typing games are fun. I still return to Mavis Beacon every now and again. Does anyone know of typing games aimed at computer programmers? I suspect they'd have to be adjusted for different languages, but coding tends to be quite different than everyday typing - lots of punctuation.
posted by grubby at 11:49 PM on June 17, 2007

grubby: There's typespeed, which has stuff like 'C# keywords' and 'unix commands' as sets of words it tests you on, as well as English.

Unfortunately, I think it was written by 14 year olds because it's terribly written, and uses words like 'masturbation' in the English vocabulary.
posted by Jerub at 4:16 AM on June 18, 2007

863,140 on my normal keyboard. This is fun and is easy to improve on.
posted by liquorice at 4:55 AM on June 18, 2007

Hey, damn it, they deleted my high score! And it was there earlier this morning.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:21 AM on June 18, 2007

1.1 million, or thereabouts. Lucked out - lots of medical terms (which come pretty fast to me). In the best tradition of natural dominance, though, my left hand encroached more and more on the traditional homelands of my right hand. I left those fingers the enter key, P, and some punctuation.
posted by cobaltnine at 1:47 PM on June 18, 2007