Journal · Games and skills
Chordfall: a free steno typing game for any keyboard
Court reporters keep up with live speech by pressing several keys at once. Chordfall teaches that skill on an ordinary keyboard, one chord at a time, and turns the practice into a game.
Chordfall. Click the game first so it hears the keyboard. Hold every key of a chord together, then let go: the stroke lands when the last key comes up. On a tablet, put a finger on each key and lift together.
What is stenography?
A typist presses one key per letter. A stenographer presses a whole chord at once and writes a syllable or a word in a single stroke. The keyboard has only 22 letter keys plus a star and a number bar, so letters missing from it are built from combinations: D is T and K together, M is P and H, and the long i in time is all four vowel keys at once.
Chordfall teaches the open theory used by Plover, the free steno software. If you go on to install Plover, what you learn here carries straight across.
How the game works
- Path. Eleven lessons and four bosses across four worlds, from the seven left-hand keys up to two-stroke words. Each lesson opens with a short theory card, and each boss is a run of phrases with three hearts.
- Chordfall. The arcade. Words fall toward a red line and you chord them before they land. It speeds up every ten words.
- Daily Drill. Twenty of the chords you are closest to forgetting. Finish it with at least half right first time to keep your streak.
- Sandbox. Free chording with a live lookup, and a test that shows how many keys your keyboard can report at once.
Hints light the keys you need on the on-screen board, then fade as you learn each chord. After a miss the board shows which keys were missing and which were extra, by shape as well as colour. Progress stays in your browser.
The keyboard you need
Many laptop keyboards stop reading after six or so keys held at once, and the biggest chords in the course need ten. Try the rollover test in the Sandbox first. If it stops short of what you are holding, the keyboard is the limit, not you, and a keyboard with N-key rollover fixes it. If you already run Plover, switch its output off while you play, because Chordfall reads the raw keys.
Where the chords come from
Every word and every accepted stroke was looked up in Plover's own dictionary file by script, not typed from memory. If Plover would write a word another way with the same number of strokes, the game accepts that too.
Chordfall teaches the foundations: the keys, the letter chords, long vowels, the commonest briefs and simple two-stroke words. It is a practice game, not a full steno system, a speed test or a certification drill.