Typing games have been a staple of educational computing since the early 1980s. Programs like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (1987) and the Type Attack arcade game made typing practice engaging enough to become a leisure activity. The standard measure of typing speed — words per minute (WPM) — was formalised in the early days of professional typewriting competitions, which date back to 1888 when Frank McGurrin won the world's first typewriting contest in Cincinnati.
Average typing speed for adult professionals is around 40 WPM. Trained touch typists typically achieve 60–80 WPM. Professional typists and competitive "typists" (a small but active competitive community at sites like TypeRacer and Monkeytype) reach 100–150 WPM. The verified world record for sustained typing speed is over 200 WPM, set by Stella Pajunas-Garnand in 1946 on an IBM electric typewriter.
Typing games are genuinely effective at building speed. The key mechanic — pressure through time limits — forces the brain to commit to keystrokes rather than second-guessing each letter, which is what separates fast typists from slow ones. Slow typists look at each key; fast typists have automated the motor pattern.
This Typing Race game scores both speed and accuracy. Each correctly typed word scores points. The timer refills slightly with each correct word, creating a feedback loop where fluent typing sustains your run longer.
How to Type Faster
- Home row position. Always return fingers to ASDF (left hand) and JKL; (right hand) after each word. Proper home row reduces reach distance to every key.
- Type words, not letters. Advanced typists encode common words as single motor programs. "the", "and", "that" — you should type these without thinking about individual letters.
- Don't look at the keyboard. If you look at keys, your eyes leave the source text. Force yourself to touch-type even when you make mistakes.
- Fix your accuracy first, then speed. A 90% accurate 60 WPM typist is effectively slower than an 80 WPM typist at 99% accuracy, because backspacing and correcting wastes more time than typing slightly slower with fewer errors.