Type a whole tongue twister, then read your accuracy and words per minute.
WPMType each word and press space after it. No timer. The run ends with the text.Shesellsseashellsbytheseashore.Swan,swan,overthesea;Swim,swan,swim!Swan,swan,backagain;Wellswum,swan!RobertRowleyrolledaroundrollround,AroundrollRobertRowleyrolledround;WhererolledtheroundrollRobertRowleyrolledround?
More options
seconds
–This run
–Your best
–Last run
No timer: the run ends with the text, or when you press Finish. Words per minute is correct characters divided by five; accuracy is correct keystrokes out of all keystrokes.
This tongue twister typing test gives you twenty old twisters to type whole, from she sells seashells to eleven rhymes of the 1836 Peter Piper alphabet. Words one letter apart follow each other, so accuracy is the score to watch.
Read the full guide
Why twisters trip fingers
Batter, better, bitter, butter: in The Butter Betty Bought four words one vowel apart come 20 times between them. Type the one you expect in place of the one printed and the error shows at once.
Old spellings are part of the test
The alphabet rhymes are typed as the 1836 printing sets them: ask'd, butter'd, kick'd and raw-bon'd, capitals and all. The shortest twister, Thomas a Tattamus, is 152 characters, about 30 standard words: half a minute at 60 WPM.
Questions and answers
How is a tongue twister typing test scored?
Net words per minute and accuracy. Correct characters divided by five give standard words, and the space after each word counts: Peter Piper typed clean is 197 characters, 39.4 standard words. Finish it in 30 seconds and that is 79 WPM.
Where do these tongue twisters come from?
Most are from printed collections in the public domain: a twister alphabet first issued in London in 1813, an 1886 book of nursery rhymes, a verse book of 1899 and a 1916 Mother Goose. The seashell and woodchuck lines are sayings, not from those books.
How old is she sells seashells?
The words she sells sea shells were printed as an elocution exercise in 1855, and the line ending by the seashore was in print by 1905, three years before the 1908 song often named as its origin, according to the Library of Congress.
Is it Betty Botter or Betty Botta?
Botta in the first printing. Carolyn Wells published the rhyme in 1899 as The Butter Betty Bought, and that wording is typed here. Later versions spell the name Botter.
All 20 twisters
Best known 5
The Butter Betty BoughtThe longest of the five best known, at 64 words. Five apostrophes to type: butter's, bit o' three times and 'twas.
How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck ChuckThe question and its traditional answer. Wood and would sound the same and are spelled apart, and woodchuck and chuck come five times each.
Peter PiperThe wording of a 1916 Mother Goose: 24 of its 34 words begin with P. The alphabet book of 1836 has a different second line, Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled Peppers?
Three Short TwistersThree short ones in a row: the seashell line, the swan rhyme of a 1916 Mother Goose and Robert Rowley from an 1886 nursery book. The first turns on S and SH, the second on swan, swim and swum, the third on rolled, round and roll.
The TutorA limerick from the same 1899 book. Tutor, tooted, tooters and toot crowd its five lines, and the question at the end is inside speech marks.
Show all 20 twisters (15 more)
From an 1886 book of nursery rhymes 4
A Thatcher of ThatchwoodThe four-line pattern of Peter Piper, on TH. Thatcher has a capital in the first line only, and the last word is thatch'd.
My Grandmother's HandkerchiefPrinted as prose. Three cornered cambric country cut handkerchief comes round three times; only new-fashioned and old-fashioned change.
Thomas a TattamusA riddle as well as a twister: the last line asks how many Ts are in THAT, typed in capitals. A tup is a ram.
When a Twister a TwistingAll three verses. The 1886 book gives its source as a grammar printed at Oxford in 1674, and the old forms show it: intwist, untwisteth, doth, 'Twixt.
The Peter Piper alphabet, 1836 printing 11
Andrew AirpumpThe letter A. Ask'd takes an apostrophe in the first and third lines and is plain ask in the second. Aunt carries a capital every time.
Billy ButtonThe letter B. Bought, buy, bought: the verb changes in the second line and the apostrophe in butter'd never moves. The first line ends on a colon.
Davy DolldrumThe letter D. Dragon has a capital in the first line and none after it, and the third line ends with no comma. Dream'd comes three times.
Enoch ElkrigThe letter E. Ate, eat, ate. Eggshell has a capital three times and loses it in the last line.
Gaffer GilpinThe letter G. Got, get, got, with a Goose and Gander in every line. The only apostrophe is in Where's.
Kimbo KembleThe letter K. Kicked is spelled out in the first line and cut to kick'd in the third and fourth. Kinsman's keeps its apostrophe in all four.
Lanky LawrenceThe letter L. Lost, lose, lost. Two things went missing, so the last line asks Where are, not Where's.
Neddy NoodleThe letter N. Nipp'd keeps both Ps before its apostrophe, and neighbour's has the British U. The first line ends on a semicolon.
Oliver OglethorpeThe letter O. Ogled, ogle, ogled, with an Owl and Oyster in every line and Where are for the pair.
Rory RumpusThe letter R. Raw-bon'd has a hyphen and an apostrophe in one word, and Race-horse a capital and a hyphen, four times each.
Walter WaddleThe letter W. Won, win, won. Where's has the only apostrophe, and this is the shortest of the eleven alphabet rhymes here.
How this list was compiled: Twenty tongue twisters, each typed whole, taken word for word from printed collections in the public domain. Eleven are rhymes of the alphabet in Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation in its American printing (Philadelphia: Willard Johnson, 1836); the book was first issued by John Harris in London in 1813 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Piper). When a Twister a Twisting, A Thatcher of Thatchwood, My Grandmother's Handkerchief, Thomas a Tattamus and the Robert Rowley lines are from James Orchard Halliwell, The Nursery Rhymes of England, fifth edition (London and New York: Frederick Warne and Co., 1886), a collection first published in 1842 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Halliwell-Phillipps); its own note gives the Twister rhyme as taken from a grammar printed at Oxford in 1674. Peter Piper and the swan rhyme are as printed in The Real Mother Goose, illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright (Rand McNally & Co., 1916; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Fisher_Wright). The Butter Betty Bought and The Tutor are by Carolyn Wells, from The Jingle Book (New York: The Macmillan Company, copyright 1899, in its reprint of 1901; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Botter gives the same wording as first published in 1899). She sells seashells by the seashore is a traditional line: the Library of Congress traces she sells sea shells to an elocution book of 1855 and this wording to a printing of 1905 (https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/07/she-sells-seashells-and-mary-anning-metafolklore-with-a-twist/). The woodchuck question and its traditional answer are as given at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_much_wood_would_a_woodchuck_chuck%3F, which cites books of 1904 for the answer. All were checked 2026-10-08. Changes: verse lines were joined with a space and nothing else was altered, so the apostrophes of ask'd and kick'd, the hyphens and the capitals, stray ones included, are each printing's own. Eleven of the alphabet book's rhymes are typed; those left out turn on a blow, a body, a people, a put-on accent, tobacco or mockery. That a tup is a ram is from https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tup. Characters and words were counted, and characters divided by five give standard words (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute). Books printed in 1836, 1886, 1901 and 1916 are in the public domain in the United States (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_States). Licence: Public domain in the United States: rhymes printed in 1836, 1886, 1901 and 1916, all before 1931, and two traditional sayings in print by 1905 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_States). The passage names, the notes, the grouping and the counts are own work.