The hardest times tables: what 35,839 answers show
Which times tables do children actually find hardest? Not which ones adults expect, but which ones they get wrong. We looked at 35,839 multiplication answers typed into Num Drill quizzes between April and October 2026, from 2,274 finished quizzes, mostly by students in grades 3 to 5 using school Chromebooks.
The short answer: the 12s are the hardest table (13.4% of answers wrong), followed by the 11s, 7s, 8s and 9s. The single hardest facts are 11 × 12 and 11 × 11, missed about a third of the time, then 12 × 12, 7 × 12 and 6 × 8.
The times tables, ranked by difficulty
| Rank | Table | Answers wrong | Median time | Answers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12s | 13.4% | 4.2 s | 4,308 |
| 2 | 11s | 9.4% | 2.3 s | 3,341 |
| 3 | 7s | 9.1% | 3.1 s | 5,769 |
| 4 | 8s | 9.0% | 3.3 s | 5,828 |
| 5 | 9s | 9.0% | 3.4 s | 5,477 |
| 6 | 6s | 8.0% | 3.0 s | 5,489 |
| 7 | 4s | 6.3% | 2.7 s | 6,829 |
| 8 | 3s | 5.1% | 2.4 s | 6,832 |
| 9 | 5s | 4.9% | 2.5 s | 6,421 |
| 10 | 10s | 3.8% | 2.3 s | 3,361 |
| 11 | 2s | 3.2% | 2.1 s | 5,734 |
A fact like 7 × 8 counts towards both the 7s and the 8s. The 2s, 10s and 5s are easiest, as every teacher would guess. The surprise is how far ahead of the pack the 12s are, and that the 11s, usually taught as an easy table, come second.
Every fact, 1 × 1 to 12 × 12
Each square shows the percent of answers that were wrong. Darker is harder.
| × | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| 3 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 8 | 11 | 2 | 4 | 6 |
| 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 9 | 4 | 7 | 9 | 11 | 10 | 2 | 4 | 6 |
| 5 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 7 |
| 6 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 18 | 15 | 3 | 3 | 11 |
| 7 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 9 | 6 | 9 | 14 | 13 | 15 | 4 | 2 | 19 |
| 8 | 2 | 3 | 8 | 11 | 6 | 18 | 13 | 9 | 11 | 2 | 3 | 17 |
| 9 | 1 | 3 | 11 | 10 | 7 | 15 | 15 | 11 | 8 | 2 | 3 | 16 |
| 10 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 17 | 10 |
| 11 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 17 | 34 | 37 |
| 12 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 11 | 19 | 17 | 16 | 10 | 37 | 20 |
White: almost never missed. Deep red: missed 20% of the time or more. Each square has at least 148 answers.
The ten hardest multiplication facts
| Fact | Answers wrong | Median time |
|---|---|---|
| 11 × 12 = 132 | 37% | 5.2 s |
| 11 × 11 = 121 | 34% | 4.2 s |
| 12 × 12 = 144 | 20% | 3.0 s |
| 7 × 12 = 84 | 19% | 6.2 s |
| 6 × 8 = 48 | 18% | 4.8 s |
| 10 × 11 = 110 | 17% | 3.4 s |
| 8 × 12 = 96 | 17% | 5.9 s |
| 9 × 12 = 108 | 16% | 6.3 s |
| 7 × 9 = 63 | 15% | 4.9 s |
| 6 × 9 = 54 | 15% | 4.9 s |
Why these facts are hard: the wrong answers tell you
The most common wrong answers show exactly what goes wrong.
- The 11s trick runs out. 11 × 11 (answer 121): most often 110, then 111. 11 × 12 (answer 132): most often 121, then 122. Children learn “double the digit” (11 × 4 = 44), which stops working at 11 × 10, and then reach for the neighbouring fact.
- Neighbours get confused. 6 × 8 (answer 48): most often 42, then 56: the answers to 6 × 7 and 7 × 8, its neighbours on the chart. 7 × 7 (answer 49): most often 42, then 48.
- 54 and 56 swap. 7 × 8 (answer 56): most often 54, then 48, and 6 × 9 (answer 54): most often 56, then 45. The two products sound alike and sit close together, so they get crossed.
- The 12s are slow as well as wrong. The median answer to a 12s fact takes 4.2 seconds, against about 2 to 3.5 seconds for the other tables: children are working them out rather than recalling them.
What this means for teaching
- Teach 11 × 11 and 11 × 12 separately. Present them as facts to memorise (121, 132), not as part of the doubling pattern.
- Drill confusable pairs side by side. 6 × 8 = 48 with 6 × 7 = 42; 7 × 8 = 56 with 6 × 9 = 54. Saying which is which beats repeating each alone.
- Give the 12s more time. They need more repetition than any other table. Building them from the 10s and 2s (12 × 7 = 70 + 14) helps until recall takes over.
- Practise out of order. Reciting a table in order hides gaps that mixed practice exposes.
How we got these numbers
Num Drill records each answer in a quiz so it can mark it and bring back missed facts. For this analysis we counted every multiplication fact from 1 × 1 to 12 × 12 answered in a finished quiz between 12 April and 21 October 2026: 35,839 answers in total. Blank answers were left out, and so were answer times over 60 seconds when working out the medians. A fact and its turnaround (3 × 7 and 7 × 3) are counted together. The data is aggregated: no names or individual results are used.
Two caveats. These are children who chose, or were assigned, a multiplication quiz, so they aren’t a random sample. And the 11s and 12s mostly appear at our hardest times-table level, so the students answering them were already working on the full 1–12 tables. You are welcome to cite or reuse these figures with a link to this page.
Practise the hard ones
Num Drill weights the facts a child misses, so the 12s and 7s come back until they stick. Free, no login.
Times tables 1–12 quiz Times table worksheetsRelated: multiplication chart · times tables practice · 10-minute multiplication routine
Common questions
What is the hardest times table?
In Num Drill's data from 35,839 answers, the 12 times table is the hardest: 13.4% of answers to 12s facts were wrong, ahead of the 11s (9.4%), 7s (9.1%), 8s and 9s (9.0%).
What is the hardest multiplication fact?
11 × 12 and 11 × 11 were missed most often, about a third of the time, followed by 12 × 12, 7 × 12 and 6 × 8. The most common wrong answer to 11 × 12 is 121.
Which times tables are easiest?
The 1s, 2s, 10s and 5s: under 5% of answers to those facts were wrong.
Is 7 × 8 a hard multiplication fact?
It is one of the harder single-digit facts, missed about 13% of the time. The most common wrong answer is 54, the answer to 6 × 9, because the two products are easy to swap.