Blind Letter Challenge

Submission 1,708

Part of a series on Internet Challenges. [View Related Entries]

About

The Blind Letter Challenge is a TikTok challenge where participants use the "TapTapABC" filter to randomly generate a letter then decide where to place the given letter in a ranked list of one to five without knowing what the next letter will be, attempting to make five letters go in alphabetical order from top to bottom. The challenge was started by TikToker @michael.dicostanzo in December 2022 and went viral in January 2023.

Origin

On December 27th, 2022, TikToker^[1] @michael.dicostanzo posted a video where he introduces a letter challenge to his viewers. In the video, he has the "TapTapABC" filter by @janmahavan^[2] generate one letter for him at a time and ranks each number in a list of one to five, attempting to get the blindly given numbers in alphabetical order but failing, garnering over 130,000 views in two weeks (shown below, left). The TikToker continued to play the game once every day following this, losing all the way through day 17. On January 1st, 2023, he posted a video to TikTok^[3] losing the challenge that gained over 1.8 million views in a week (shown below, right).

Spread

The challenged spread throughout January 2023. On January 4th, 2023, TikToker^[4] @_nickvogel played it for the first time, garnering over 1.4 million views in a week (shown below, left). On January 10th, TikToker^[5] @hennykaller stitched one of @michael.diconstanzo's videos where he loses, winning on his first try, garnering over 3.3 million views in three days (shown below, right).

On January 12th, 2022, TikToker^[6] @_nickvogel posted a video doing the "25 letter blind letter challenge," assigning each letter to a ranked list of 25 as it goes, the joke being that it is impossible to lose as long as you know the order of the alphabet ("V" is not included in the filter, which is why it is the 25 letter challenge, not 26). The video gained over 222,000 views in a day (shown below, left). Later that day, the TikToker^[7] posted a video using the shut up it is not sound referencing the challenge, garnering over 931,000 views in a day (shown below, right).