Hi everyone,
Reading this old Reddit thread, and seeing the following comment, got me thinking.
[–]maelfyn -2 points 8 years ago
Game needs more quote variety. I think I was typing about ten different quotes. Averaged about 98 wpm
After reading this, I realized that an announcement about our progress on adding new, richer texts is long overdue. So, without further ado. . .
Typeracer Texts/Quotes – 2017 New Years Status Update
We’re starting to build up a regular cadence for adding new quotes. As of January 14 2017, we are at 2,058 quotes in the main universe, play.typeracer.com ! Of those, a total of ~1,500 new quotes have been added since Sep. 2016. Typeracer’s quote environment is the broadest, and freshest, it’s ever been.
If you’ve been racing much recently, you’ll have noticed the new quotes. Our newest batch has includes a selection of user submissions; as a reminder, you can always submit your favorite quotes using the “Contribute” link at the bottom of TypeRacer . (We will review it only if the submission is complete.) Thanks to everyone who has been submitting! Everyone has a part in defining what Typeracer becomes by submitting their favorite quotes, so if you have any ideas, be sure to submit them.
In addition, we’ve included loads of new quotes from classic films and books. For example, we added the following quotes/sources in December:
| Title | Author | # of texts |
| War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | 15 |
| The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | 15 |
| The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | 15 |
| Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy | 15 |
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | 15 |
| Nineteen Eighty Four | George Orwell | 15 |
| Ulysses | James Joyce | 15 |
| Don Quixote | Miguel de Cervantes | 15 |
| V for Vendetta | James McTeigue | 15 |
| Moby Dick | Herman Melville | 15 |
| Catch-22 | Joseph Heller | 15 |
| The Grapes of Wrath | John Steinback | 15 |
| Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison | 15 |
| Great Expectations | Charles Dickens | 15 |
| The Aeneid | Virgil | 15 |
| David Copperfield | Charles Dickens | 15 |
| The Godfather: Part III | Francis Ford Coppola | 15 |
| Hamlet | Shakespear | 10 |
| The Odyssey | Homer | 10 |
| One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | 10 |
| The Iliad | Homer | 10 |
| Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | 10 |
| Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | 10 |
| Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland | Lewis Carroll | 10 |
| The Sound and the Fury | William Faulkner | 10 |
| The Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger | 10 |
| Wuthering Heights | Emily Brontë | 10 |
| The Trial | Franz Kafka | 10 |
| The Arabian Nights | Anonymous | 10 |
| Gulliver’s Travels | Jonathan Swift | 10 |
| The Stranger | Albert Camus | 10 |
| The Fault in Our Stars | John Green | 10 |
| Citizen Kane | Orson Welles | 10 |
| 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY | Stanley Kubrick | 10 |
| The Godfather | Francis Ford Coppola | 10 |
| The Godfather: Part II | Francis Ford Coppola | 10 |
| The Wall | Pink Floyd | 5 |
| Sawdust and Tinsel | Ingmar Bergman | 5 |
| Economix | Michael Goodwin | 5 |
| The Art of War | Sun Tzu | 5 |
| The Backpacker’s Handbook | Chris Townsend | 5 |
| Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone | J.K. Rowling | 5 |
| Twilight | Stephenie Meyer | 5 |
| The Canterbury Tales | Geoffrey Chaucer | 5 |
| Vertigo | Alfred Hitchcock | 5 |
| Apocalypse Now | Francis Ford Coppola | 5 |
| The Unbearable Lightness of Being | Milan Kundera | 2 |
| Anne of Green Gables | L.M. Montgomery | 2 |
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | 1 |
We also added both quotes from Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s books (we kept it to 2 quotes per candidate!). I hope you enjoy all of these new quotes as much as I have. For me it’s been a learning experience being exposed to many of these classic works for the first time during a race. Does exposure to texts through a typing game translate into any kind of comprehension, spark any interest, or create any other value? I’ll leave that to the community to decide, but I’m optimistic, and look forward to hearing what everyone has to say.
On the competitive side of things, the freshness of quotes has made the high scores on individual texts more accessible than they’ve been in years. Typeracer’s fastest typists haven’t been able to race on many of the new quotes, and some quotes have barely been raced at all. It’s fun to be among the first people to type a new quote, and as an added bonus, anyone who completes these quotes is bound to get on the high scores list for that quote.
Thanks to everyone who made it happen!
There are a lot of folks we need to thank for their contributions in helping us passing the 2,000 mark – you know who you are and thank you for everything. In particular, I’d like to thank Sean Wrona (arenasnow) who has given us much inspiration in terms of our vision for our texts.
Quick Tip – “Texts completed”
As a quick tip, you can track your progress in the quotes (i.e., how many of Typeracer’s total quotes you’ve completed at least 1 race on) with the “texts” metric on http://www.typeracerdata.com/leaders. It’s a fun way to track your progress, and you’ll know that as long as you’re racing, you’re making progress.
Interested in helping out?
Anyone interested in helping us add more texts to Typeracer (selecting sources, entering texts into the system, reviewing texts, etc.), please email me david@typeracer.com or message me on your favorite typing game site. We’d love to work with you.
Hope you enjoy the new texts, and know that we have a lot more coming in 2017. Let us know what kinds of quotes you want. Leave a comment on the blog, or stop by to discuss with us in the unofficial Typeracer Discord channel.
https://discordapp.com/invite/0ywHG3vVlLFli5tD/ (NSFW – not formally affiliated with Typeracer)
Thanks!
David (valikor)
