Tap-along metre game
Feel it in your thumbs
One famous line at a time. Say it in your head, and tap each syllable light (da) or stressed (DUM) as it lands. First try is blind — the pattern reveals itself afterwards.
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Maud, and Other Poems (1855)
Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven
W. B. Yeats
Poems
A. E. Housman
A Shropshire Lad
Half a league, half a league,
DUM-da-da, twice — like hooves.
Syllable 1 of 6. Tap light or stressed.
Your shelf
The five feet
Every line in the game is built from these. Learn the five and you can name anything you tap.
| Foot | Sounds like | Example in the game |
|---|---|---|
| Iamb | da-DUM | A light syllable leaning into a stressed one: “compare”, “to DAY”. |
| Trochee | DUM-da | A stressed syllable falling away: “ROUGH winds”, “ON-ly”. |
| Dactyl | DUM-da-da | One stress and two lights after it: “HALF a league”. |
| Anapaest | da-da-DUM | Two lights running into a stress: “by the SAL-”. |
| Spondee | DUM-DUM | Two stresses side by side: “GO NOW”, “true MINDS”. |
How a round works
Pick a line and say it in your head. Each tap marks one syllable: da for light, DUM for stressed — the F and J keys work too, and Backspace undoes. Your first try is blind on purpose: the ear goes first, the names come after. When the line is done you get a score, the line's true pattern, and the name of its metre.
Three clean stars with the guide off means the line is yours. A dashed chip takes either tap: where good readers genuinely disagree, the game refuses to mark you wrong.
Private by design
Scores are the only data chant keeps, and they stay in this browser (on your own device, under a key only this page reads). Nothing you tap is sent to a server, there are no accounts, no sign-in, no analytics and no ads. “Forget my scores” wipes them at once.
For teachers
Chant is built to test one bet: that ten minutes of tapping moves real scansion skill. A ready-made protocol — a short pre/post scansion quiz around one session — ships with the build notes; if a class shows no measurable gain, the game has failed its own test and should go back to the workshop.
Sources and rights
Every line in the game is public domain in Australia (each author died before 1955). Texts follow the editions below; the full source list with death years lives in SOURCES.md beside the code.
| Poet | Edition | Read it |
|---|---|---|
| William Shakespeare (d. 1616) | Shakespeare's Sonnets | Gutenberg #1041 |
| Alfred, Lord Tennyson (d. 1892) | Maud, and Other Poems (1855) | Gutenberg #56913 |
| Alfred, Lord Tennyson (d. 1892) | Poems (1842), via Wikisource transcription | Wikisource |
| Edgar Allan Poe (d. 1849) | The Raven | Gutenberg #1065 |
| W. B. Yeats (d. 1939) | Poems | Gutenberg #38877 |
| A. E. Housman (d. 1936) | A Shropshire Lad | Gutenberg #5720 |
About the syllable counts
The game's keys are hand-scanned, but every word's syllable count is cross-checked against the shared spelling estimator (the same counter behind the haiku and tanka rules), with its two known misses — marriage and league — recorded as overrides in the canon. Estimates are usually right for everyday English and can be one out for names and words said two ways.