All 16 Paris Métro lines, ranked by how hard they are to type

HelloSubway has the whole Paris Métro: Lines 1 to 14 plus the two short independent lines, 3bis and 7bis, which makes 16 lines. To see which ones are a good first ride, we counted the keystrokes it takes to type every station of each line once. Only letters and digits are counted, and accents cost nothing extra because you can type the plain letter (more on that in the accents guide). The spaces, hyphens and apostrophes you also have to press add a few more keys per line.

The two short lines

Line 3bis has four stations and needs 45 keystrokes. It runs from Porte des Lilas to Gambetta and is the shortest line in the network, at 1.3 kilometres. Line 7bis has eight stations and 85 keystrokes. It ends in a small loop, so Botzaris is passed twice but typed only once. Either one takes less than a minute, which makes them a fair warm-up before a long line.

The easiest full lines

Among the lines with a real route, Line 11 is the lightest: 19 stations and 246 keystrokes. After it come Line 2 with 25 stations and 269 keystrokes, Line 5 with 22 stations and 290, Line 3 with 25 and 291, Line 10 with 20 and 296, Line 14 with 21 and 303, and Line 6 with 28 and 310. All of these are under about 310 keys, so a steady typist finishes them in a couple of minutes.

Station count is not the whole story

Line 1 and Line 2 both have 25 stations, but Line 1 takes 371 keystrokes against 269 for Line 2. The difference is in the names. Line 1 has Champs-Élysées - Clemenceau, Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre, Charles de Gaulle - Étoile and Château de Vincennes, while Line 2 has short names such as Ternes, Anvers and Pigalle. Line 4 has 29 stations and 403 keystrokes, and Line 13, where you type the Saint-Denis branch, has 26 stations and 406. Line 12 has 31 stations and 441.

The hardest lines

Three lines take more than 500 keystrokes. Line 7 has 33 stations and 507 keystrokes on the Villejuif branch. Line 9 has 37 stations and 512. Line 8 has 38 stations and 593, the most of any line, and it carries the longest name of the whole game, Créteil - L'Échat (Hôpital Henri Mondor), at 40 keystrokes. The next longest is Aubervilliers - Pantin - Quatre Chemins on Line 7, at 39. At the other end, Rome, Cité and Iéna need only four keys each.

Where to start

If you have never played, take Line 11 or Line 2, then move up to Line 1 and Line 6. When you want a real test, try Line 8 against the clock, or switch to Express mode, which drops you onto random stations from the whole network for 60 seconds. Every line page shows its history and its station list, and you can start any of them from the Paris page.