The Mix game

Mix is the recommended way to practice. Rather than one exercise type for a whole session, it switches between them card by card, so the same word gets tested in several different ways.

It's also the game used by today's session and by Fix your recent mistakes.

What it can include

Mix draws from:

• Flashcards
• Quiz
• Write
• Hanzi - on Chinese decks only
• Audio - Premium, and only for cards that have audio

Memory and Hangman are not part of Mix; they're standalone games.

Choosing which games it uses

Go to Language settings and look for Mix mode games. Tick the games you want included - you need at least 2. The setting is per language, so you can have writing exercises on a language you're learning to spell and leave them off one you're only learning to recognise.

You can also reach this from a Mix intro screen, which lists what's currently included alongside a link to change it.

By default Mix uses everything available for that language.

How the balance works

In today's session and other spaced-repetition Mix sessions, the game for each card depends on how well you already know that word:

• New words (low SRS levels) lean toward Quiz - the easiest format.
• Mid-level words mostly get Flashcards.
• Well-known words (high levels) lean toward Write - the hardest format.

When the session has no SRS level on the cards (for example playing a deck directly), Mix picks evenly among the games you enabled.

Some exercises are also capped so a session doesn't fill up with the slow ones:

• Write is capped at about 30% of a session.
• Hanzi and Audio are capped at about 20% each.

A few other rules apply automatically: Quiz drops out of sessions of 3 cards or fewer, Audio is skipped for cards without generated audio, and Hanzi only applies to cards that actually contain characters.

During a session

• Show first works here, so prompts can lead with the target or source word, or randomise per card.
• On an Audio card, Can't listen now turns audio off for the rest of the session - useful if you started a session somewhere you can't play sound.
• Wrong answers reappear 5 to 8 cards later, so the session may run a bit longer than the number you chose.

Why bother

Recognising a word on a flashcard is a much lower bar than producing it in a writing exercise. Mixing formats means your levels reflect something closer to actually knowing the word, instead of just knowing how it looks in the format you always practice.