>>So... give it a zero for a parameter, or else it won't wait, and your chances of lifting your finger off a key at exactly the right moment are pretty much nil.
>
>Also from help: Returns a number corresponding to the first mouse click or key press in the type-ahead buffer.
>
>So since INKEY() is picking up the value from the buffer if there's nothing there then it's because other processing has not allowed the OS time to process the keystroke

There's that. Also, in the code presented here, inkey() was called twice, thereby eating two keystrokes. IOW, calling inkey() doesn't just detect that there's something in the buffer -- it consumes it as well. ChrSaw() is the function to detect there's something there. I've generally found it useful to store anything that inkey() may return into a variable, so it doesn't get lost.