I attended an incredibly small, private, middle school called Carden in Stockton, California, a place of magnificently ugly pleated skirts and polo shirts of the green, yellow, white and navy blue variety, like the Flag of Gabon had it also black, and classes of 12 students or less. We had no science labs, computer labs, or anything remotely technologically significant, and so when a course in typing came around, we each had to bring in our own archaic, garage-sale standard typewriters of circa 1980 with manual scrolling and echoing keystrokes- or, if you were of the cooler sort in class, you brought in the latest and greatest in typewriter technology of the late-90s, with their pencil thin green LCD screens and noiseless typing (Nicoletta Ruhl, I’m thinking of you).

As in any beginning typing course, the first line to christen our rescued, borrowed, reinvented typewriters was The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. What’s so interesting about this phrase? It’s a pangram, meaning it contains all the letters of the English alphabet, and its use dates back to the 1800s in publications about shorthand and typing. A January 10, 1903 issue of Pitman’s Phonetic Journal, even referred to the phrase as, “the well known memorized typing line embracing all the letters of the alphabet.” It stands true today, and to bring it even more to the modern age, iPhone app developer Rob Pearson recently created The Quick Brown Fox app as a way to freshen up your typing skills, in a fun and non-serious gaming way.

The app is simple, the thumbnail showing a cute brown fox with sweet googly eyes sitting on his haunches, as if braced to jump over that lazy dog somewhere offscreen. The drawing actually reminds me of the artwork in The Little Red Hen and The Boy Who Cried Wolf, two children’s apps I reviewed earlier this year. The Quick Brown Fox, however, may be used by people of all ages, as it sends you on a frenetic and sometimes irksome journey of typing out this iconic phrase. The goal, obviously, is to type the phrase as quickly as possible, but the app tries to make it interesting by switching up the keyboard on you, ridding any semblance to the usual QWERTY setup.

At first I was confused – isn’t this a typing app to improve your skills on the iPhone? Come to think of it, since so many iPhone users gripe about using their keyboard, even in landscape mode, fumbling around with their fingers, I’d think The Quick Brown Fox would completely capitalize on this. At the same time, the developer was wise enough to realize that typing as an artform is relatively impossible on the tiny iPhone, and everyone’s typing prowess dwindles down to that childish hunt and peck style most of us put by the wayside long ago. So, this app instead capitalizes on the hunt and peck fashion most iPhone users employ, and turns it into a challenging game of spatial awareness, speed, and quickness of the flesh. With each keystroke, the keyboard switches the letters randomly, and the H you had your eye on when tapping the T is now gone from its spot on the lower right to somewhere in the middle.

My first attempt had me at a paltry 1:30:48 for my first try, for a scant 35 letters (*cries in defeat*). On my second try, though, I sped up immensely and found myself at the top of the Global Chart with a time clocking in at 1:03:58, about 9 seconds less than the next runner-up, some girl in Kenya. I’ll try not to think about how many people are actually updating their scores on a game like this (I’ll have to include myself in that mix…).

For awhile, I was intrigued if there was some set pattern, or logic, to the rearranging of the keyboard, and trying to figure this out led to some momentary satisfaction on my part. After realizing it was completely random, however, my interest in challenging the game waned. At least my quickness of speed and finding letters really improved after many tries, a skill I’m sure can be relayed into other avenues, like finding words in Scramble 2. Cute and entertaining the app may be at first, it doesn’t have much longevity, and, honestly, $0.99 just doesn’t seem worth it. So many other apps of that price are full-fledged games, or apps that provide information or resources or directions – and this isn’t even counting the innumerable free apps that accomplish so much more.

If you feel like trying out The Quick Brown Fox for free, our treat, feel free to use the Promo code provided below:

Promotion Codes:

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*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.