Happy New Year
Hi All – Happy belated New Year! On behalf of Typeracer I’d like to introduce our first (but hopefully not last) guest author on this blog. Noah (licahfox) is an old-timer on the site, and truly a top-rate typist. Back in Aug. 2008, the first month that Typeracer supported user accounts, and thus the beginning of all our data, Noah was the #1 typist, with an average of 160 wpm during that month. He also had the highest single score (213 wpm), a huge 50-60wpm higher than his next competitor.
I recall being one of the best racers myself (my 128 wpm average put me in 6th place in this timeframe, and I was the second most winning typist (982 wins) — second only to Bob Bongloaded (bob_bongloaded), who had an impressive 2,000+ wins! Noah was always able to beat me, but at least with his being a professional organist, I was okay with that!
In any case, later in the post we’re going to introduce a new exciting feature. The dedication of Typeracer’s fan base over the years has been inspiring to me, and the fact that we have a chance to collaborate with an old Typeracer fan who’s been playing since the beginning is completely ‘yuge, and we’re happy to be working with Noah to introduce this new feature. Let’s consider it Noah’s “Christmas present” to the Typeracer community – a engineering marvel for armchair software engineer Noah “Licahfox”, pulled off in all the spare time that he most certainly does not have.
It any case, since this “Christmas Present”, a new Typeracer contest format, is based on the Typeracerdata.com platform, we thought we’d announce Noah’s main TRData website here on our blog at the same time.
What is Typeracer Data?
Typeracerdata.com: It’s an awesome website for Typeracer fans and racers trying to track their progress. It’s also motivating, with statistics like “text bests” (the average of a user’s best race on each text). For me personally, this lets me view every race as an opportunity to beat my record on the individual text–regardless of how hard or easy it is–and effortlessly track my progress. This might help keep Typeracer fresh for some people. The rankings on the site are unofficial, since the database is incomplete by nature, but at least for the fastest typists, the data is largely complete and should be pretty accurate. And, the more the site is used, the more complete the data becomes!
The competition on Typeracer is heating up
One last thing I want to call-out before I turn you over to Noah is that I’m truly impressed with how the competitive environment on Typeracer has blossomed over the past 8 years. Noah had the fastest average in Aug. 2008 but is now #59! We now have racers such as “Typeracer Domination” Award-Winner Izzy (blade5468), Typeracer Hall-of-Fame 2016 nominee Fyda, Romanian typing legend Andrei “Why didn’t anyone nominate me?” Cristescu (kakarotto), upcoming Sean-Wrona-challenger Shazzy (treiderik) are setting a very high bar, and it’s been a lot of fun racing with you guys in 2016 
Here’s to 2017, and I shall pass you over to Noah. Anyone else interested in guest authoring can email me at david@typeracer.com, or message me on Typeracer. Thanks!
David Pritts (valikor)
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Typeracer Championship 2017
By Guest author: Noah (licahfox)
Hi Typeracers,
We’ve launched a new competition called TypeRacer Championship 2017! Each month, the Championship Universe will contain a small number of texts, on which top typists will compete to see who can achieve the highest overall score; We award prizes to those who rise to the top, both for the monthly competitions and also for the overall winners of 2017.
For the current session of January 2017, which runs through the end of the month, TypeRacer will offer prizes as follows:
- First place: $50
- Second through fifth place: One free premium account for a chosen username
Many racers have already enrolled in the first Championship round, which began earlier this month. Whether you want to compete for a prize, or simply see how far you can climb up the rankings, we encourage you to participate this month in TypeRacer Championship 2017!
TypeRacer Championship 2017 Official Site
Hope you enjoy it!
Noah (licahfox)
