The 280 Challenge
Each round gives you a long, rambling sentence. Edit it down until it fits in 280 characters, or 140 if you want it hard, without dropping the facts that matter.
Original
How scoring works
Your score for a sentence is out of 100, made of two parts:
- Facts kept: up to 70 points. Each sentence has five key facts, such as a name, a day, a number or a place. You get 14 points for each one still present in your version. Spelling numbers as digits is fine; "8" counts the same as "eight".
- Space used: up to 30 points. The closer you get to the limit without going over, the more of these you get. A version that uses 270 of 280 characters scores better than one that uses 150 and drops detail.
Going over the limit scores nothing. The meter turns red and tells you how many characters to cut.
Your best score for each sentence is saved in this browser, separately for 280 and 140 mode. The total at the bottom adds up your bests across all ten sentences, so the maximum is 1,000 per mode.
Tips for cutting
Most long sentences carry a lot of padding. These cuts usually save the most:
- Drop throat-clearing. "We want everyone to know that" can go entirely.
- Swap phrases for words. "At the end of this month" becomes "end of month". "Starting next month" becomes "from next month".
- Use digits. "Thirty percent" is 14 characters; "30%" is 3.
- Use symbols carefully. "&" saves two characters over "and", but too many make a post hard to read.
- Cut the second reason. Long sentences often give two reasons where one does the job.
The character counter follows the rules in our guide to how X counts characters. Tweet Test is not affiliated with X Corp.; the counter is our own implementation of X's published counting rules.
Questions
Why does my count differ from a simple letter count?
The game counts like X: emoji and Chinese, Japanese or Korean characters count as two, and any link counts as 23 no matter how long it is. Plain English text counts one per character, spaces included.
Is the 140 mode just for nostalgia?
Partly. It is also what X still uses as the practical limit for Chinese, Japanese and Korean text, since those characters count double against 280.