Multiplication Bee

A live elimination competition on multiplication facts, run like a spelling bee. Students step up to a station one at a time and say their answers out loud. Speech recognition scores every answer automatically, a projected leaderboard shows the room who advances after each round, and rounds continue until one student is left standing as champion.

They say them out loud. Speech recognition listens and scores every answer, which is what makes the spelling-bee format work for math. Natural speech is accepted — both “one forty-four” and “one four four” count for 144, and Spanish is scored too. The keyboard is used for one thing only: pressing the spacebar to advance to the next card.

No. The software scores every answer, so there is no panel of judges, no answer key to mark and no argument about what a student said. If a score is ever questioned, the commissioner can open that student’s run and see the result card by card.

Anywhere from about 12 minutes to 3 hours. It depends on how many students you have and — more than people expect — how quickly you narrow the field. Eight students cutting 3 per round finish in about 12 minutes; 25 students cutting half the field each round take roughly half an hour; 60 students cutting 10 a round runs closer to 3 hours. Cutting FEWER students per round is what makes an event long, because eliminating one at a time from a small field costs more turns than the whole early field does. The setup screen estimates the length live as you adjust the rules.

Nothing. It is free to run, with no license, no per-student fee, no subscription and no ads. It runs on What Times What, a free math fluency app.

A device with a microphone for the student station, and a second screen or projector for the leaderboard. Any laptop, tablet or phone works, and nothing needs installing — it all runs in a browser.

By default all 78 non-commutative pairs of the 12×12 table — the full deck, so 7×8 and 8×7 are not asked as two separate facts. An event can instead be restricted to a single times table if it is being run for one grade or one unit.

There are five divisions: 10U, 12U, 14U, 18U and Open. Divisions are a ceiling rather than a band, so 12U means twelve and under, not eleven and twelve. Competitors may play up into an older division but never down, Open has no ceiling, and age is determined as of September 1. One event has one division, so a school running two divisions runs two events. More on divisions.

Yes. Spanish speech recognition is supported, so students can answer in Spanish, and the event and the projected leaderboard can both be set to Spanish.

Anyone with a room and some students. Individual classroom teachers run them as an end-of-unit event, whole schools run them as an assembly, and homeschool co-ops, PTAs, libraries and community groups run them as family math nights. No preparation is needed beyond creating the event — registration, student PINs, the play order, the projected board and the scoring are all handled for you. See the step-by-step guide.