Most people have an opinion on which times table is the hardest. Usually it's the 7s. Sometimes the 8s. Occasionally someone says the 12s and everyone nods along.
We've got something a bit better than opinions. Over the past year, children playing Trivela FC have answered just over 800,000 times tables questions. Every answer gets recorded: whether it was right, what they actually typed and how long they took.
So I had a look.
The league table
Here's how the 2 to 12 times tables rank, based on the percentage of questions children got right. Football fans will recognise the format.
| Pos | Times table | Answered correctly |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3s | 93.8% |
| 2 | 5s | 93.8% |
| 3 | 2s | 92.9% |
| 4 | 4s | 91.9% |
| 5 | 12s | 91.4% |
| 6 | 6s | 90.9% |
| 7 | 7s | 90.6% |
| 8 | 9s | 89.2% |
| 9 | 8s | 89.2% |
| 10 | 10s | 85.4% |
| 11 | 11s | 83.6% |
The 3s and 5s are fighting it out for the title. The 8s and 9s are scrapping at the wrong end, with the 7s and 6s not far above them. No great surprises there.
The 12s did better than I expected. They have a reputation, but children see a lot of them and it shows.
Then the 10s and 11s turned up
I didn't see this coming. The 10s and 11s are supposed to be the easy ones. You add a nought. You write the number twice. Job done.
I'd be careful reading too much into it. We have far fewer answers for these two tables, and most of them come from the stage where children are meeting a table for the first time, not practising one they already know.
But it's still a useful reminder. "Easy" tables aren't easy until a child has actually practised them.
The hardest single question
Across all the questions with a decent amount of data, one stands out.
6 × 9.
Children got it right 76.7% of the time, so nearly one in four got it wrong. And when they got it right, it took them a median of 5.2 seconds. Compare that with 3 × 4, which they answered in 1.8 seconds.
Fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will know that 6 × 9 has form. In the book, it's the question that gives the answer 42. Our players weren't quite that far out, but they weren't far behind either.
The swap shop
This is the bit I found most interesting.
When children get a times table wrong, they don't usually guess randomly. They give a real times table answer. It just belongs to a different question.
These were the most common wrong answers:
- 6 × 9 was most often answered as 56 or 63
- 7 × 8 was most often answered as 63, 54 or 48
- 7 × 9 was most often answered as 56
- 6 × 8 was most often answered as 56
- 8 × 8 was most often answered as 63
Look at the numbers going round in circles: 48, 54, 56, 63. Children know these numbers. They've just got them attached to the wrong questions.
It's a bit like knowing every player in the squad but getting their shirt numbers mixed up.
The single most common mistake across all 800,000 answers was 3 × 6 = 24, which happened 396 times. A close runner-up was 11 × 12 = 121, which is a perfectly good answer to 11 × 11.
What that tells us
It sounds obvious, but the problem with the hard times tables isn't always that children don't know them. It's that the answers in the middle of the grid look alike and start to blur together.
That changes how I think about practice. Going through the 7 times table from top to bottom is useful, but it doesn't really test whether a child can tell 7 × 8 apart from 6 × 9 when they turn up out of order. The confusion happens when the facts sit next to each other, so that's probably where the practice needs to happen too.
And it's quite encouraging when you think about it. A child who answers 56 to 6 × 9 isn't lost. They're nearly there. They just need a bit more time with the questions that look like each other.
If your child is stuck on 7 × 8, they're in good company. Several hundred other children were too.
And if they'd rather practise with a football than a worksheet, you can give Trivela FC a go. We're still learning from every answer, so I'd love to hear what you think.
About the data: this covers just over 800,000 times tables answers from more than 1,100 children playing Trivela FC between October 2025 and October 2026. The league table uses the learning, practice, full journey and multiplication check modes and counts each question towards both of its tables (so 6 × 9 counts for the 6s and the 9s). The ×1 table is left out. Answer times are medians for correct answers only.