How to Play
The basics
Radio Alphabet shows you a random sequence of letters. For each letter, your job is to say or type the correct phonetic word from your chosen alphabet — for example, B is Bravo in NATO, or Baker in the British Forces 1952 alphabet.
A correct answer turns the letter slot green and moves on automatically. A wrong answer turns it red. You can skip any letter with the Skip button. At the end of a round, click or say "Next" to start a fresh sequence.
Use the alphabet dropdown on the Play tab to switch between NATO, British Forces 1952, US Financial, and L.A. Police Department. Switching mid-round scores any unplayed letters as fails and starts a new round with the new alphabet.
Playing with the keyboard
Keyboard mode is the default. Each letter slot has a text field — type the phonetic word and press Enter to submit. Capitalisation doesn't matter.
Common alternate spellings are accepted. For example, Alfa for Alpha, Juliett or Juliette for Juliet, Mic for Mike, and Vector for Victor.
Playing with speech
Click the microphone icon in the top bar to switch to speech mode. The icon turns blue when active. Two sub-modes are available depending on your device:
Desktop — auto-listen
On desktop, the microphone stays open continuously for the whole round. A pulsing red dot shows when the browser is listening. Just speak each phonetic word aloud — answers are processed as you go, with no button to press between letters.
When a round ends, the microphone keeps listening. Say "Next" to start the next round without touching the keyboard.
Mobile — tap to start, tap to stop
On mobile a microphone button appears below the letter slots. Tap it once to start listening — it stays open until you tap it again. Speak each word when you're ready; results register automatically. Say "Next" at the end of a round to advance.
Speech recognition requires a microphone and a browser that supports the Web Speech API (Chrome on Android, Safari on iOS). The app needs to be served over HTTPS for the API to work on mobile.
Mobile
The app is fully usable on a phone. A few things worth knowing:
- The tab bar uses a two-row layout on narrow screens — the logo and controls are on top, the tabs below.
- Speech mode works on Chrome for Android and Safari for iOS over HTTPS. See the tap-to-speak instructions above.
- Sound effects, dark mode, and all statistics work the same as on desktop.
Statistics and redeeming fails
The Statistics tab tracks your hit and fail count for every letter A–Z, per alphabet. The overall accuracy figure at the bottom is the percentage of correct first attempts across all letters.
Letters you struggle with appear more often in new rounds. The weighting is steep: a letter with even one fail is picked roughly nine times more often than a letter with a perfect record, and the gap grows quickly with each additional fail. This keeps practice focused on your weak spots.
Redeeming fails
You can work off a fail by getting a letter right five times in a row (while it still has at least one fail on record). Once you hit that streak, one fail is removed. Keep going and you can clear a letter's record entirely — it takes five consecutive correct answers for each fail you want to erase.
A green dot appears on the Statistics tab when you've redeemed at least one fail since you last visited — a nudge to check your progress.