Schulte table average time, and why your own time matters more
· 7 min read · Tyamka team
What open sources say about average times on a 5×5 and 7×7 Schulte table, why the numbers disagree, and why your time changes from round to round.
If you have just finished a 5×5 Schulte table and want to know whether your time is good, here is the short answer. We found no well-sourced average for adults doing the usual table from 1 to 25, so the most useful yardstick is your own time on the same grid last week. Online you will find plenty of numbers, and they do not agree. One site calls 8 seconds excellent for an adult without saying which grid it means, another calls 20 seconds excellent on a 5×5, and a small lab study measured an average close to 38 seconds on a 5×5 counted backwards from 25. Below is what each source says and where its number comes from. If you have not done a table yet, try one in the Schulte table game first, then come back.
What the open sources say
We looked for numbers that come with a clear origin. There are not many.
| Source | Grid | What it says | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Khramova et al., Sensors, 2021 | 5×5, from 25 down to 1, on a tablet with a stylus | Adults aged 18 to 20 averaged 37.7 seconds per table, with a standard deviation of 12.8 seconds | Measured in a lab, ten adults, five tables each |
| schultelab.org | 5×5 | 20 seconds or less is excellent, 21 to 25 good, up to 30 average | No source, the page says values vary between sources |
| schultelab.org | 7×7 | 79 seconds or less is excellent, 80 to 100 good, up to 120 average | No source. We found no measured average for 7×7 |
| lddgo.net | not stated | For adults, under 8 seconds is excellent and 20 seconds is moderate | No source |
| iSpeedReader | 7×7 red-black (Gorbov) | About 1.5 minutes is optimal | No source. A different task from a plain 7×7 |
The only number here that someone actually measured is the first one. In the study by Khramova and colleagues, ten young adults each did five 5×5 tables on a tablet while their brain activity was recorded. They searched from 25 down to 1 and pointed with a stylus, and their average time was 37.7 seconds per table. The spread was large. With a standard deviation of almost 13 seconds, both 25 and 50 seconds are within about one standard deviation of the average. It was also a lab with sensors on the head and a reversed order, which is not the same as tapping a phone on the sofa from 1 upwards. So it is not an average for the usual table from 1 to 25.
The other numbers are grading scales without a source. They may well come from some older work, but none of the pages we checked says which one. They are also hard to compare with each other, since lddgo.net does not even say which grid its grades are for. The iSpeedReader figure is for the red-black table, a different task, described in the article on Schulte table variants.
Why the numbers disagree
Even when a number is honest, it depends on things that are rarely written next to it:
- Grid size. A 7×7 table has 49 numbers, almost twice as many as 5×5, so there are more cells to look through and more numbers to find.
- Direction. Counting from 1 up and from 25 down are two different tasks, even on the same grid.
- Paper or screen. On paper you point or say the number, and a friend or a stopwatch keeps time. On a screen you tap, and the tap itself takes time. A mouse, a touchscreen and a finger on paper are all different speeds.
- What counts as done. Some tests stop when you find the last number, some add a penalty for mistakes, some let you skip.
- Practice. Someone doing their first table and someone who does ten a day are not comparable, even if they are the same age.
So a number without its grid, its direction and its method tells you very little. It is worth being suspicious of any page that gives a single "norm for adults" and no source.
Why your time changes from round to round
If you do five tables in a row, you will almost certainly get five different times. That is normal. Some possible reasons:
- The layout. Each table is shuffled. Sometimes 1 to 5 sit close together near the centre, sometimes they are spread over four corners. The same person can be several seconds faster on a lucky grid.
- Warming up. The first round of a session can be slower while your eyes and hands settle in.
- Tiredness and boredom. After many rounds, times can get worse again, because it gets harder to stay with the search.
- Mistakes. One wrong tap, and the pause after it, can cost more than the difference between a good and an average round.
- The day itself. Sleep, noise, how many times you checked your phone before starting. Any of these can show up in the timer.
This is also why a single fast round is not a new level of ability. It may be a lucky layout on a good day.
How to read your own time
Your own earlier times are the only comparison where the grid size, the direction, the device and the person are the same. A few ways to make that comparison fair:
- Stick to one grid size and one direction while you compare. Do not mix 5×5 and 6×6.
- Use the same device. A phone time and a laptop time are not the same measurement.
- Do three rounds and look at the middle time, not the best one.
- Write down the date, or use a game that saves your results for you.
- Compare this week with last week, not this round with the previous one.
If that middle time goes down over a couple of weeks on the same grid, you have got faster at this particular task. What the table asks of you and what the time does and does not show is covered in the article on Schulte table benefits.
What Tyamka shows after a round
In our game, the results screen after each level shows your points, the speed bonus, the time, the number of mistakes and your previous best. The best is kept separately for each of the 15 levels, so a 5×5 round only competes with other rounds on the same level. The record is kept in points rather than seconds. Every correct tap gives 10 points plus up to 10 more for speed. A wrong tap takes no points away, but it costs one of your three lives, and when the lives run out the level ends.
Level 6 is the classic 5×5 grid with numbers going up. Level 7 is the same grid counted down from 25. Level 8 goes up, but the grid reshuffles after every correct tap. Level 9 counts down and reshuffles. So times on levels 7 to 9 are not comparable with level 6. On the 7×7 grid, level 14 counts down from 49 and level 15 counts up, which again makes two separate results.
We do not show you a norm or say how you compare with other players. We do not have honest data for that, and neither do the pages we checked.
So what is a good time?
There is no reliable answer for adults in general. For tracking your own progress, the most useful comparison is with your own times from last week on the same grid. If you still want an outside number, the only measured one we found is an average of about 38 seconds for ten adults aged 18 to 20 on a 5×5 table counted from 25 down, with a wide spread around it. Anything that promises a precise norm without saying where it came from is best ignored.
If you have not read it yet, the article on what a Schulte table is explains the method and where to look while you search. More games for focus and memory are on the all games page.