Schulte Table World Record — Fastest Community-Reported Times
No organization certifies a Schulte table world record — so this page does the honest thing: it collects the fastest community-reported, unverified times by grid size and age group, with a source attached to every single claim.
Finish a round to start your progress curve.
First, the honest part: there is no official world record
Unlike sprinting or chess, the Schulte table has no governing body, no standardized rules, and no certified record list — Guinness World Records has no dedicated category for it. Every “world record” you have ever seen for this exercise, including every number on this page, is community-reported and unverified.
Comparability is the second problem. The extreme times below come from PC and mobile apps where found cells gray out or vanish, clicked with a mouse — a different and easier task than pointing at a paper grid or playing the aid-free timer on this site. Different apps, devices and rules make direct comparison impossible.
Fastest community-reported times by grid size
Every entry below is community-reported and unverified — a mouse-click app run, a leaderboard screenshot or a video, repeated exactly as the community reported it. These numbers show what extreme practice can do, not what a typical trained player scores. The classic 5×5 (5x5) grid is the most contested category.
| Grid | Reported time | Source (community-reported, unverified) |
|---|---|---|
| 3×3 | 0.917 s | Player “Zhiqiu Yiye” (知秋一叶) — Zhihu post, Sep 2021 source ↗ |
| 4×4 | 1.707 s | Player “Zhiqiu Yiye” (知秋一叶) — Zhihu post, Sep 2021 source ↗ |
| 5×5 | 2.498 s | Video by player “Kao” — Bilibili, Jul 2021 source ↗ |
| 5×5 | 2.502 s | Leaderboard run by “Mochuan” (墨川) on the Saolei app, Jan 2022 — reported on Zhihu source ↗ |
| 6×6 | 4.876 s | Video by player “小米粥” (Saolei app) — Bilibili, Sep 2024 source ↗ |
| 6×6 | 6.107 s | Player “Zhiqiu Yiye” (知秋一叶) — Zhihu post, Sep 2021 source ↗ |
| 7×7 | 13.938 s | Player “Zhiqiu Yiye” (知秋一叶) — Zhihu post, Sep 2021 source ↗ |
| 8×8 | 27.553 s | Player “Zhiqiu Yiye” (知秋一叶) — Zhihu post, Sep 2021 source ↗ |
| 9×9 | 54.364 s | Player “Zhiqiu Yiye” (知秋一叶) — Zhihu post, Sep 2021 source ↗ |
| 10×10 | 100.116 s | Player “Zhiqiu Yiye” (知秋一叶) — Zhihu post, Sep 2021 source ↗ |
How to read these numbers: they are single best attempts out of thousands of tries, on apps where found numbers typically gray out. They are not comparable to paper tables or to the no-aid timer on this site — your own classic-grid times being several times slower is completely normal.
What “fast” actually looks like, by age
Forget the outliers for a moment. For everyday training, the meaningful benchmark is the “excellent” band of the commonly published reference tables:
| Age group | Excellent 5×5 time (reference band) |
|---|---|
| Children 6–10 | ≤ 28 s |
| Teens 11–17 | ≤ 25 s |
| Adults 18+ | ≤ 20 s |
First-time adults usually need 35–60 seconds on a 5×5 grid. Full bands for 3×3 to 10×10 and four age groups — with their sources — live on the standard-times page →
Dynamic variants: no records exist — yet
Our nine dynamic variants have no public records anywhere we could find: no leaderboards, no videos, no community score posts. The board is genuinely empty — the first credible submission for each mode gets listed on this page (as community-reported and unverified, like everything else here). Pick your mode:
How to verify your own time
- Use the game above (or the full 5×5 page) on a single device — device and input method change results.
- Play classic 5×5 mode with no pauses; record at least 5 rounds and take the median, not your single luckiest run.
- Compare your median against the age-banded reference table before calling anything a record.
- For extraordinary claims, capture a full screen recording — it is the minimum evidence the community takes seriously.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an official Schulte table world record?
No. No governing body certifies Schulte table records, and Guinness World Records lists no dedicated category. Every “record” you see online — including the ones on this page — is community-reported and unverified, often from apps with different rules and timers, so times are not directly comparable.
What is the fastest 5×5 Schulte table time?
The fastest community-reported 5×5 claims sit around 2.5 seconds, from Chinese mouse-click apps, via leaderboards and videos (unverified). On classic grids without visual aids, trained players commonly cite 8–15 seconds, while untrained adults typically need 35–60 seconds for their first rounds.
How do people finish in under 10 seconds?
Extreme times combine center-gaze peripheral scanning, chunking several numbers at once, thousands of repetitions, and fast mouse-click apps where found cells gray out. That setup differs from paper pointing or aid-free grids, so treat sub-10-second claims as community-reported and not directly comparable.
Can I submit my own record?
Yes. Play a round above, note your device and grid size, and email a screenshot or screen recording to hello@schultelab.org. Credible submissions are listed on this page as community-reported and unverified — especially for the dynamic variants, which currently have no public records at all.
Test yourself — or take the empty board
Play the classic 5×5 grid, check where you land on the standard-times table, and if you beat anything on this page — especially on a dynamic variant — email a screenshot or recording to hello@schultelab.org.