Times Tempo: every table from 2 to 12 on a four-beat rhythm, with missed facts re-drilled until they stick
Times Tempo is a times table game played to a beat. Choose one table from 2 to 12, or Mix, and each fact arrives with four beats ticking underneath it; answer before the fourth, gold beat and it pays a tempo bonus. Get eight right in a row and the multiplier goes up and the beat speeds up. The part that does the teaching is what happens when you miss: the fact comes back three questions later, and once more a little after that, and a mastery grid remembers every fact from 2 × 1 to 12 × 12 between visits so the next round asks more of the ones that are still shaky.
Pick a level (Easy, Medium or Hard) and a table from 2 to 12, or Mix for several tables at once.
Press Start. A fact such as 7 × 8 appears with four beats underneath it.
Type the answer on the pad or your keyboard. It checks itself as soon as you have typed enough digits.
Answer before the fourth beat for the tempo bonus. A late right answer still scores, just without the bonus.
Miss one and the correct fact is shown; it returns three questions later, then again eight questions after that.
The round lasts sixty seconds. Afterwards the facts you missed are listed and the mastery grid updates.
A right answer scores 10 points, plus 5 if it lands before the fourth beat, multiplied by your multiplier. The multiplier starts at 1 and rises by one for every eight right answers in a row, to a maximum of 4; each step also shortens the beat by a tenth. A wrong answer scores nothing and resets the streak.
The beat is 1.1 seconds on Easy, 0.85 on Medium and 0.65 on Hard, so the bonus window is four beats long. The round is sixty seconds, and your best score is saved separately for each level in this browser, so compare runs on the same level.
Automatic recall of multiplication facts: the point where 7 × 8 arrives as 56 without being worked out. The beat puts a gentle ceiling on thinking time, which separates facts you know from facts you are reconstructing, and the re-drill turns every miss into another retrieval a few seconds later instead of a moment of embarrassment that is quickly forgotten.
Learning a times table is a memory problem, not an arithmetic one. Working out 7 × 8 by counting up in sevens takes several seconds and a lot of attention; retrieving 56 takes under one. Brain-imaging work on children and adults finds that people who retrieve arithmetic facts from memory, rather than calculating them, do better at mathematics as a whole, because retrieval leaves working memory free for the rest of the problem.
Two findings from learning research shape the game. The first is the testing effect: being asked to recall a fact strengthens it far more than reading it again, which is why every fact here is a question rather than a chart. The second is spacing: a fact re-tested after a delay is kept longer than one crammed in a row. A miss is therefore re-asked three questions later, then eight after that, and between sessions the facts at the lowest mastery level are picked more often, in the way a Leitner box of flash cards works.
The grid is smaller than it looks. 7 × 8 and 8 × 7 are one fact, so the 132 facts from 2 × 1 to 12 × 12 hold about 66 distinct pairs, and the 1, 2, 5, 10 and 11 times tables take care of many of those with simple rules. What remains is a short list of genuinely hard facts, mostly in the 6, 7, 8 and 9 times tables, and those are exactly the ones the re-drill keeps returning to.
Start with one table on Easy until its bar under the table button passes 75%, then add it into Mix.
Use a neighbour you own. If 7 × 7 = 49 is automatic, 7 × 8 is one more seven: 56.
Swap the order when one side is easier. 4 × 9 and 9 × 4 are the same fact, and the game treats them as one.
When a miss is revealed, read the whole fact to yourself once. It is coming back in three questions.
Chase the gold beat rather than the score. Speed comes from recall, and the score follows it.
One that asks the facts out of order, repeats the ones you get wrong and remembers them between sessions. Times Tempo does all three: shuffled facts, missed facts re-asked within the round, and a saved mastery grid that makes the next round lean on your weakest facts.
The 2, 5 and 10 times tables, then 3 and 4, then 11. Those anchor most of the grid. The 6, 7, 8 and 9 times tables hold the facts people find hardest, such as 6 × 7, 7 × 8 and 8 × 9, so practise them one at a time before mixing.
Each of the 132 facts from 2 × 1 to 12 × 12 has a level. Answering on the beat moves it up one; a late right answer holds it; a miss drops it back to red. A table's percentage is how far its twelve facts have climbed. It is saved in your browser, not an account.
Easy mixes the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 times tables up to × 10 with a slow beat. Medium mixes the 2 to 10 times tables up to × 12. Hard mixes 2 to 12 with a faster beat and asks a quarter of the facts backwards, as in ? × 8 = 56.
Yes. There is no sign-up, no chat and nothing to buy, the numbers are large, and a wrong answer shows the right fact rather than a penalty screen. Adults use it the same way to get their tables back up to speed.
The grid asks you to fill every cell of a chart once against the clock. Times Tempo keeps asking the facts you miss until they are right, on a rhythm, and remembers them for next time, so it is the one to use for learning rather than for testing.