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Oh, it's definitely possible to go lower than 5x8 and include symbols, but the issue is aesthetics. A lot of your lowercase letters are going to look taller than they usually would, which can be a distraction when reading.

If you don't care about appearances and just whether or not every character is distinct enough to be understood, then I think 4x6 is probably the limit, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

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Here is a 4x4 font: https://simplifier.neocities.org/4x4.html .

BESM-6 used to show CPU registers content with lights ( http://www.mailcom.com/besm6/ ); with this font, each 48-bit register could show 3 letters.

Look, I'm not going to deny its legibility, but I (and this is my opinion only) don't like it's appearance. It's pretty impressive considering the constraints though. This is what I meant by ugly territory in my original comment.

I think the 4x4 is legible only when you are already used to it and/or have the the full font as a reference. There are several letters and numbers which, when seen on their own, cannot be unambiguously deciphered.

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