[tsegratis]

Nice. Random thought:

Geometrically 50% of the movement does nothing (going left is a null action). In terms of distance moved by the pointer it would be more efficient to arrange the options as a circle around the pointer, with maybe the bottom 10% of the circle used for the null action

A possible benefit is 90% of the screen could then be used to display a larger set of options, which could let the user bisect their choices more quickly

[bacon_waffle]

That is an interesting idea! The space of possible next characters expands polynomially, so as you say, the display might be better used with a polar grid compared to cartesian.