Which keys the subway makes you press: letters, hands and rows in six cities

Every station in the game is a short typing drill, and each city drills different keys. We took the station names you type in each city, counted each name once, and split the keystrokes by letter, by hand and by keyboard row. For the Latin-script cities that means a standard QWERTY keyboard. For Seoul it means the standard Korean 2-set layout, where every consonant sits under the left hand and every vowel under the right.

New York: a left-hand city

Typing all 433 New York station names takes about 6,300 keys, and 69 percent of them fall to the left hand. The reason is one word. S, T, R and E are all left-hand keys, so Street is typed without the right hand at all, and the numbers 1 to 5 sit on the left too. The longest names you can type with one hand are 231st Street, 233rd Street and 121st Street, eleven keys each. The letter E alone is 16.6 percent of everything you type in New York, with T at 12.8 percent.

Q is rare and almost always means Square: Times Square, Union Square, Court Square. Z turns up mostly in Plaza, and X in Lexington, the Bronx and Avenue X on the F train.

Tokyo: the right hand's city

Tokyo is the only city in the game where the right hand works harder, 56 percent of the keys. Romanized Japanese is built from vowels, and I, O and U are right-hand keys, as are H, K, J and N. A alone is 16.7 percent of Tokyo's keys and I is 12.2 percent. Tokyo also has the most home-row typing of any city, 43.9 percent. Akasaka can be typed without leaving the home row, and Oji with the right hand alone. Q and X never appear in a Tokyo station name we have.

Seoul: hands that take turns

Korean works differently. A Hangul syllable is built from a consonant, a vowel and sometimes a final consonant, and on the 2-set layout those come from opposite hands. Of the 3,611 keys in Seoul's 486 station names, 60 percent are consonants, typed with the left hand, and 40 percent are vowels on the right. Measured key to key, the hand changes 81 percent of the time. In the Latin-script cities it changes between 41 percent (New York) and 51 percent (London and Singapore) of the time.

The single most common key in Seoul is ㅇ, at 15 percent: it is the silent first letter of syllables like 역 and 양 and the final -ng of names like 동 and 강. Some keys barely appear. ㅋ is in only two names, 월드컵경기장 and 남동인더스파크. The doubled consonants are rarer still: ㄸ only in 뚝섬, ㅆ only in 쌍문, ㄲ only in 까치산 and 까치울.

Paris, London and Singapore

Paris names use the left hand 58 percent of the time, with E at 14.7 percent of all keys. Abbesses is typed with the left hand only, and Pereire, Europe and Riquet stay entirely on the top row. Q turns up 15 times in Paris names, more than in any other city, thanks to Quatre Septembre, République, Ourcq and the Quai de la Rapée. Accents do not count here: you can type Pereire without them, as the accent guide explains.

London is the most balanced Latin-script city, 58 to 42, with E at 10.4 percent and O close behind. There is no Z anywhere in London's station names in the game, and X appears only in Oxford Circus, Brixton and Vauxhall. Kentish Town is a perfect alternator: all eleven keys switch hands, one after another.

Singapore's most common letter is A, not E, at 12.1 percent, because of Malay names like Tampines, Paya Lebar and Tanjong Pagar. Joo Koon can be typed with the right hand alone, Yew Tee stays on the top row, and Clementi and Downtown switch hands on every key.

What to do with this

If your left hand is the weaker one, New York will work it hardest. If you want to practise flowing between hands, Seoul's alternation is the closest thing in the game to a rhythm drill. And if you just want speed, Tokyo's home-row-heavy names let you stay put. Every city's numbers come from the same station lists you type, so they will change when lines are added. For the length of the names rather than their letters, see the longest station names in the game.