Abdul Basit Siddiqi accomplished the feat by typing a two-sentence long text message in a lightning 17.5 seconds in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on May 22:
“The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.”
Siddiqi, who attempted the record to inspire his students, typed out the above text message using Swype in the presence of Guinness timekeepers and judges.
Swype technology allows users to input words on a virtual keyboard on their smartphone by sliding a finger from the first letter of a word to its last letter, lifting only for spaces. It also predicts the intended word using error-correction algorithms.
Siddiqi spent an average of 15 minutes per day to practice for his record.
According to a ProPakistani article, Siddiqi had achieved his first world record by identifying all elements in the periodic table in 3 minutes and 9.29 seconds last December.
"In mental calculations, I am not anything like a genius but from my childhood, I was pretty good at it," he told ProPakistani at the time. "I touched pretty much every field, science, commerce, arts. But the subjects with numbers, I liked the most."
