I like to point out to people that to learn the times tables up to 10, there are only really 36 facts to learn, since anything times 1 or 10 is trivial, and mul

I like to point out to people that to learn the times tables up to 10, there are only really 36 facts to learn, since anything times 1 or 10 is trivial, and multiplication is commutative. (That's already a nice little problem to look at, to show that it is 36.) And then there are many interesting tricks to approach those 36. For example, the 'fingers' trick for the 9 times table. (Which leads to consideration of why do the digits of a multiple of 9 always add up to a multiple of 9?) Muliplying by 5 is half of multiplying by 10. Multiplying by 4 is doubling twice, etc. Before you know it, you just have to drill the ones most common to choke on (like 7x7, 7x8).