How to play
- Press Start. You have 8 minutes for all 100.
- Type an answer, in any order. It counts as soon as it matches, with no need to press Enter, and fills in its row.
- Pause whenever you like; the list is hidden while the clock is stopped. If you leave mid-game, it waits, paused, until you come back.
- When the time is up, the ones you missed fill in, marked as missed.
How the list was made
The list was counted, not copied: every word in 13 public-domain novels from 1900 to 1925, the same books the site’s typing test draws on, about 1.1 million words in all. Contractions such as don’t and abbreviations such as Mr are left out, and the 100 words that remain most often make the list, ranked by count. Almost all are short words that hold sentences together, so the hard part is remembering words you never notice.
More facts (names some answers)
Because the texts are novels, words for telling a story rank higher than in lists made from news, speech or the web: said, little, oh and the old-fashioned upon are in the top 100 here. Lists counted from modern writing rank words such as people, year and work instead. Pronouns rank high too, because the novels are full of people talking.
The novels counted
- The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925)
- Babbitt (Sinclair Lewis, 1922)
- Main Street (Sinclair Lewis, 1920)
- The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton, 1920)
- The Magnificent Ambersons (Booth Tarkington, 1918)
- My Ántonia (Willa Cather, 1918)
- O Pioneers! (Willa Cather, 1913)
- Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery, 1908)
- A Room with a View (E. M. Forster, 1908)
- The Call of the Wild (Jack London, 1903)
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum, 1900)
- The Time Machine (H. G. Wells, 1895)
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892)
What counts
Each word counts on its own, in any order. One-letter words count; a word typed that could still become a longer one waits a moment, or until you press Enter.
Capitals, accents, spaces and punctuation don’t matter, but the spelling does.
More to play
- El Word: One hidden word a day. Six guesses to find it.
- Stroop Test: Name the ink, not the word. How much does reading slow you down?
- Typing Speed Test: Type the words as they come. How many words a minute, and how accurately?
- Countries of the World: Type every country you can before the clock runs out.
- Capitals of the World: Name the capital of every country before the clock runs out.
- Periodic Table: Name every chemical element before the clock runs out.
- Element Symbols: Name the chemical element behind every symbol.
- Flags of the World: Name the country from its flag.
- Scrambled Countries: Unscramble the letters to find the country.
- Scrambled Capitals: Unscramble the letters to find the capital city.
- Greek Alphabet: Name all 24 letters of the Greek alphabet, from their shapes.
- NATO Phonetic Alphabet: Name the code word for every letter, A to Z.
- Planets: Name the eight planets of the solar system in one minute.
- Olympian Gods: Name the twelve gods of Mount Olympus from what they ruled.
- English Monarchs: Name every king and queen of England since 1066.
- Zodiac Signs: Name the twelve signs of the zodiac from their dates.
- Best Picture Winners: Name every film that has won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
- All quizzes
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