Anki was my favorite study tool while I was learning French, Classical Latin and Ancient Greek vocab during my undergrad. It came in handy yet again when I had to memorize hundreds of artworks for my doctoral comprehensive exams. Eight months ago, I decided to mobilize it for Scrabble, and the results have been spectacular.
With my AnkiDeckBuilder, you can study alphagrams, definitions, and leave values!
Why Anki, you might ask? There’s three major reasons: it has the best of our most commonly used study tools, its FSRS algorithm allows you to learn the most amount of words in the least amount of time, and it’s incredibly customizable. Also, did I mention that it’s free**?
- All The Best Parts in One
● Zyzzyva:
○ Like Zyzzyva, Anki lets you study offline, without an internet connection, on your desktop and phone, and lets you sync your progress across devices.
○ As on Zyzzyva desktop, Anki allows you to search for hyperspecific queries. So, if you wanted to study the top 10,0000 probable 7s that have two anagrams, are nouns, and only have 2 vowels, you could search for—and study—just that.
● Xerafin:
○ Like Xerafin, the Anki decks automatically show you words in exactly the order that you need to study them. Once you import the decks into your Anki account, you can immediately start solving. You never have to think about when to upload the next set of words or what to study next.
○ Anki also has a web browser, like Xerafin, that you can study on, if you don’t want to download an app
● WordVault:
○ WordVault’s FSRS algorithm was adopted from Anki
○ Anki allows you to store the entire lexicon on your account for free and it doesn’t require internet access
- The FSRS Algorithm
● The Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler (FSRS) asks you to tell Anki how well you were able to remember a solution — Again if you got it wrong or couldn’t remember at all, and Hard, Good or Easy if you got it right
● With FSRS, users have to do 20–30% fewer reviews than with other cardbox systems to achieve the same retention level.
● The FSRS is also much better at scheduling cards haven’t been able to use Anki in a while. You are not penalized for a backlog, and you no longer have to restart or reschedule your cardbox if you fall behind on reviews!
● Anki’s FSRS optimizer uses machine learning to learn your memory patterns and find parameters that best fit your review history. With Anki, you’re only tasked with reviewing what is most useful for your brain at that moment.
- The Customizability
● What Do YOU Want to Study?
○ With Anki, you can choose to study exactly what you want and in the order that you want. On any day, you can tackle your due cards by studying all 1-anagram words, all 5s, all vowel dumps, or all OUT- words first. You can even study in order of ease and get through all the easy words first.
○ You have control over when you see new words. For example, you can study new words first or go through your due cards/reviews first or you can even have the new words be mixed in with reviews.
○ Anki lets you control how many words you want to study today, every day, or by each deck, and it lets you set different review schedules for each day of the week (e.g. fewer cards due on Mondays)
● Visual Customizability
○ Tiles can be consonant-first, vowel-first, or alphabetized.
○ The alphagrams look like real-world tiles, so the pattern recognition is even faster over the board
○ Get optional lexicon symbols, even within definitions
○ Get Zyzzyva-style formatting for the answers by default
○ Get optional color-coding for answers by anagram count
○ Use the Anki UI to customize fonts, colors, and highlights!
If you want to try using Anki, grab yourself a Beginner/Intermediate or Expert deck (https://github.com/nchagti/AnkiDeckBuilder/tree/main/Sample_Anki_Decks/CSW24_Anagrams_decks ) and start solving! You can also download my AnkiDeckBuilder (https://github.com/nchagti/AnkiDeckBuilder/ ) to study definitions or leave values.
You can join the Anki Discord (https://discord.gg/tRVvG7KkeZ ) if you have more questions.
**AnkiMobile on iOS is a one-time payment, but AnkiWeb (the browser), Anki’s desktop app, and AnkiDroid (for Android) are all free.