9 Times Table Finger Trick Explained

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The nine times table has a pattern you can show on your hands. It can be a handy memory aid for facts from 9 × 1 to 9 × 10. This guide pairs the trick with a calculation, so your child can understand the answer as well as find it.

Try 9 × 4 with your fingers

Hold up ten fingers and count them from left to right, from one to ten. Keep that counting direction the same throughout the activity.

1. Fold down the fourth finger.
2. Count the fingers before the folded finger: three.
3. Count the fingers after it: six.
4. Read those counts as three tens and six ones: 36.

So 9 × 4 = 36. If using fingers is awkward, draw ten short lines on paper and cross out the fourth line. The pattern is the same. You can also skip the finger method and use the calculation below.

Why the trick works

Nine is one less than ten. Four groups of nine are therefore four groups of ten with four taken away: 9 × 4 = 10 × 4 − 4 = 40 − 4 = 36.

Try the same idea for 9 × 7: 70 − 7 = 63. On your hands, folding the seventh finger leaves six fingers before it and three after it. Those stand for six tens and three ones.

For these first ten facts, the tens increase as the ones decrease: 09, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90. The total of the two digits is nine. This is a pattern to notice, but it is not enough on its own to identify the correct answer: both 36 and 63 have digits that add to nine.

Use the fact in another way

If 9 × 4 = 36, then 4 × 9 = 36 as well. The same fact also tells us that 36 ÷ 9 = 4 and 36 ÷ 4 = 9. One multiplication fact can therefore support several related questions.

Imagine four bags with nine marbles in each bag. There are 36 marbles altogether. Sharing those 36 marbles back into four equal bags returns nine per bag.

A mistake to watch for

Count the fingers on each side of the folded finger; do not count the folded finger itself. Read the left-side count as tens, not as another number to add to the right-side count. Three tens and six ones mean 36, not nine.

Try it, then check it

1. What is 9 × 6? Check with ten times six minus six.
2. If 9 × 8 = 72, what is 72 ÷ 9?

Answers: 1. 54, because 60 − 6 = 54. 2. 8, because division reverses the equal-groups multiplication.

Your matching study notes

• Multiplication and division connections: read the study notes · Download the member PDF

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