Printable Multiplication Chart Maker

What the printed multiplication chart looks like

The filled chart is one US Letter page: a title, the range under it, and the grid. The numbers being multiplied run along the top row and down the left column in bold, on a faint gray wash, with a heavier rule fencing them off from the products, and the times sign sits in the corner where the two meet. Every product is printed in near black in its own square, and nothing on the page is in color.

Every range prints at the same width, 182 mm or a little over seven inches, so the squares shrink as the range grows: 16.5 mm across on the 1 to 10 chart, 14 mm on the 1 to 12, 13 mm on the 0 to 12, 11.4 mm on the 1 to 15 and 8.7 mm on the 1 to 20. The type is sized to the longest number on the chart, so on the 1 to 20 chart 4 and 400 print at the same size, about 11 point, rather than the small products looming over the large ones.

The grid lines print in gray at one of three weights, faint, normal or strong, the same three the graph paper maker uses. Faint suits a chart that will be written on; strong survives a photocopier.

Fill-in charts and their answer keys

A fill-in chart prints the factors and some of the products and leaves the rest of the squares empty. Random gaps come in three amounts, a quarter, half or three quarters of the products, and they are spread evenly rather than scattered: on the 1 to 12 chart every row and every column has exactly 3 empty squares at a quarter, 6 at half and 9 at three quarters, so no table is left full and none is emptied. On a range whose rows do not divide evenly, each row and column is within one of the rest.

The other gaps follow a pattern. Leaving out the square numbers empties the diagonal, the twelve squares from 1 × 1 to 12 × 12. Leaving out everything above the diagonal empties the 66 squares to the upper right of it, every one a fact printed below it the other way around, 7 × 3 below for 3 × 7 above. Leaving out one table empties a single row and its matching column, 23 squares on the 1 to 12 chart, crossing at the table's own square.

Every fill-in and blank chart comes with its answer key on the next page unless you switch it off. The key is the chart again with every square written in, the printed numbers in near black and the answers in a lighter gray, so whoever is marking can see which squares were the child's. Like every key on this site it prints plain, with no border, to save ink. A filled chart has no key, since there is nothing on it to check.

Five different practice charts in one download

A random fill-in chart is made from a seed, so the maker can make another with different gaps whenever New charts is pressed, and the versions setting puts up to five of them in one PDF. Each version is a different chart from the same settings and each is followed by its own key, so a set of five prints as ten pages: chart, key, chart, key.

That is the Monday to Friday set among the ready-made charts at the top of this page. Monday and Tuesday have a quarter of the products missing, Wednesday and Thursday half, and Friday three quarters, so the week ends with the chart three quarters empty. The patterned fill-ins and the filled and blank charts are the same chart every time, so the maker does not offer versions for those; the copies box in the print dialog does that job.

A chart for looking up, a drill for remembering

A filled multiplication chart is a reference, and the patterns on it are worth pointing out to a child before it goes on the wall. Each row and its matching column hold the same numbers, because 4 × 7 and 7 × 4 are one fact. The diagonal holds the square numbers. And of the 144 products on the 1 to 12 chart only 59 are different numbers, because a number like 24 can be made several ways: 2 × 12, 3 × 8, 4 × 6 and each of those turned around.

Looking a fact up is not the same as knowing it, though. The Common Core asks third graders to know from memory every product of two one-digit numbers, and recall comes from practice with nothing to count along, which is what the shuffled times tables drills on this site are for. A sensible order is the filled chart for reference, a fill-in chart once the patterns are understood, and drills once the chart is coming back right.