9 Times Table Worksheets

How do you learn the 9 times table?

Multiply by ten and take the number away once. 9 x 7 is 70 take 7, which is 63. Then check it: the digits of every answer in this table add back to 9. Chant the twelve facts, answer them out of order, mix them with other tables, and only then reach for a clock.

Ten of them, take one away

Nobody has to learn the 9s from nothing, because everybody can already multiply by ten. 9 x 6 is 10 x 6 with one six removed: 60 take 6, 54. 9 x 8 is 80 take 8, 72. 9 x 12 is 120 take 12, 108. It is two easy steps instead of one hard one, it never fails, and it is what a child needs on the morning they go blank halfway through a test. Most adults who say they know their 9s are doing exactly this and doing it fast.

The digits of every answer add up to nine

This belongs to the 9 times table and to no other table under twelve. Add the digits of any answer here and you get 9: 18 gives 1 and 8, 27 gives 2 and 7, 54 gives 5 and 4, 81 gives 8 and 1. Where the first sum is bigger than 9, add again. 99 is 99, whose digits give 18, whose digits give 9. 108 is 108, and 1 and 0 and 8 land on 9 straight away.

That turns a page of marking into a glance. An answer whose digits do not come back to 9 is wrong before anybody works out what it should have been, and a child can run the check on their own sheet without an adult and without the chart. It is the oldest arithmetic check there is, and it has a name: casting out nines.

One digit up, one digit down

Write the first ten answers in a column: 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90. Cover everything except the last digit and it counts down, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. Cover everything except the first digit and it counts up, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Two columns walking past each other in opposite directions.

The pattern stops at 90. 99 and 108 sit outside it, which is why the last two facts of this table are the two most often missed, and why the sheets on this page give the top half of the table a print of its own.

The answers come in reversed pairs

9 x 2 is 18 and 9 x 9 is 81. 9 x 3 is 27 and 9 x 8 is 72. 9 x 4 is 36 and 9 x 7 is 63. 9 x 5 is 45 and 9 x 6 is 54. Any two factors that add up to eleven give two answers made of the same two digits the other way round.

Learn half the table and the other half comes with it, as long as the pairs are learned as pairs. It is also where the mistakes come from: 36 and 63 are built from the same two digits, and a child in a hurry writes the wrong one and cannot see anything wrong with it afterwards.

The finger trick, and when to take it away

Hold up ten fingers and number them one to ten from the left. To work out 9 x 4, fold the fourth finger down. Three fingers stand to the left of the folded one and six to the right, so the answer is 36. It works from 9 x 1 to 9 x 10, and it is real arithmetic rather than a party trick: the folded finger is the one being taken away from ten.

Let a child use it, and then take it away from them. It is too slow for a timed sheet, which is exactly why the timed sheets are at the bottom of this page and not the top.

Nine is three threes

9 is 3 x 3, so the 9 times table is the 3 times table applied twice over. 3 x 4 is 12 and 3 x 12 is 36, which is also 9 x 4. That overlap is worth knowing, because it is where the confusion lives: 36 belongs to the 3s, the 4s, the 6s, the 9s and the 12s all at once, and a child who meets it in a mixed drill has to decide which one is being asked.

A group of 9 is also a square. Nine dots make three rows of three, which is why the array sheets here stack small squares instead of drawing one long thin block, and why a sudoku box holds exactly 9 squares.

In what order to print them

Day one is the chart and the in-order ladder, and nothing after that. The chart is for looking at and the ladder is for filling in, and a child who has just read 09, 18, 27 down a page can write that same run out without being asked anything new.

Day two, hand over a shuffled sheet. Out of order the pattern gives nothing away, and the gap between the two days is the honest measure of what stuck. Stay on shuffled pages until they come back as fast as the ordered one did.

After that the missing numbers, where 9 x ? = 81 is division under another name. Then the mixed pages, because a sheet of pure 9s lets a child answer without ever reading the first number.

The timed grids come last and only last. Every trick on this page, the ten take one, the fingers and the digit check, is too slow for a clock, so a stopwatch handed over early measures the trick instead of the table.

The answers are already printed

Anything here that asks a question is two pages: the sheet, then the identical sheet with the answers set in green. Marking is holding the two side by side, and nobody has to work out what 9 x 7 should be to see whether 63 is what was written.

Three sheets have no key because they need none. The chart, the desk strips and the tracing page print their answers as part of the design. The flashcards use page two for the card backs, mirrored column by column, so a single double sided print gives a deck with every answer behind the fact it belongs to.

What the 80 sheets cover

Six groups, in roughly the order they should be worked: the table set out in order, the table shuffled, the table read backwards as missing numbers and divisions, the table hidden among the other tables, pictures for anyone who still needs to see what 9 x 7 is, and the timed grids.

Every file prints the same on US Letter and on A4, in black and white, without a sign-up and without a watermark. Take one sheet or take all 80, for one child or for a whole class.

More multiplication practice

The three tables below this one each have a page of their own. The 8 times table is the one the 9s are most often mistaken for, because their answers are only one group apart. The 7 times table is the opposite case: it has no pattern of its own to lean on. The 6 times table is the 3s doubled, where the 9s are the 3s squared, so the two of them share a parent. All the rest are in multiplication worksheets, the whole grid on a single sheet is the multiplication chart, and there is a printable poster for every table from 1 to 12 in the times table charts set. Read backwards, division worksheets and skip counting worksheets run on the same facts this page drills.