In a recent post we introduced a series on word study. We also discussed Anki specifically, and now we will turn to a more in-depth discussion of the popular word study program Aerolith. First introduced in the 2000s, it has been a regular part of my study routine since I first started playing in 2008. Specifically we will discuss WordWalls, which can be found at https://aerolith.org/wordwalls/ . After setting up an account, you will find yourself on the screen shown above.
For this guide, we will be talking specifically about the “Single-Player Challenges” tab. Other parts of Aerolith will be discussed in later posts.
On the left side, you can see the Lexicon menu, which you can change as needed. For the daily challenges you cannot change the time or questions as these are fixed for the purposes of the leaderboard (right side). There are several different quiz types available each day:
By Word Length - This it the most commonly used quiz and our main focus. Each day you will get 50 random alphagrams for each word length 2-15 (since 2 and 10-15 are rarely done, they are separated and put at the bottom). The vast majority of players focus on length 4-8.
Word Builder - Here a set of tiles are presented, and you must find all unique words of length 3-6, 4-7 and 5-8 respectively.
Week’s Bingo Toughies - This is a weekly quiz that takes the hardest to solve 7s and 8s from the previous weeks daily 7 and 8 quizzes. A very tough quiz that I would only recommend to more advanced players, and ideally those who have seen all the bingos at least once.
All-Time Bingo Toughies - A daily 7s and 8s quiz of the hardest to solve bingos all time. Each alphagram has a difficulty rating from 0-100, and only those with a rating of 80+ are included. Again only recommended for advanced players.
High-Probability Toughies - The toughest bingos that are high in probability. Because of their probability, many of these have multiple solutions.
Settings
After loading any quiz, before you start you can select the gear icon at the top to access the settings.
These are various display options for the quizzes. If you do not prefer tiles alphabetically, you can set a custom tile order a well. Most of these are pretty self-explanatory. Lexicon symbols would be used if you want to differentiate words that are CSW only (#) most commonly. You can also turn on dark mode, which is nice if you are studying at night. For “Hide Errors” Aerolith by default will show how many wrong guesses you attempted, and also display this in the leaderboard (standings are first by % of alphagrams fully solved, then number of errors, then time remaining). If you turn on this option you can hide the number of wrong guesses.
Quizzes
Once you load a quiz, you will have a fixed amount of time (longer word lengths have more time) to solve as many of the alphgrams as you can. To the left of the alphagram is the number of solutions remaining. For example EEILPST has two solutions (EPISTLE PELITES) and this will be cleared once both are entered. Try to solve as many as you can before time runs out!
Important note: Once the quiz is over, you will have the option to continue the quiz as many times as you want. Any alphagram that wasn’t fully solved will be displayed again, and you will have to put in all solutions to clear it, not just ones you did not type in previously. The timer is only for the purposes of the leaderboard.
When you are done with the quiz (or gotten to the point where you cannot solve anymore), you can view the solutions. I did not do the quiz below hence they are all marked as missing for purposes of this example. We can see the probability for each alphagram, and for bingos the difficulty score mentioned previously.
In this second image from a quiz I did do, you can see there are three highlight types:
No highlight - Answer solved without errors
Cream highlight - Answer was solved but with at least one error
Red highlight - Answer was not solved
You can also click on “mark as missed” for solved alphagrams - when you load the unsolved list, this will then be added.
Leaderboard
For each quiz type, there is a daily leaderboard (except Bingo Toughies which is weekly). Only the results for the first run through count (i.e. before the timer hits zero). As mentioned before, the results are sorted by percentage of alphagrams fully solved, then errors, then time remaining. Note that if you turn on hide errors, this column will not be shown. I would recommend hiding errors if you feel like seeing that number would be more harmful than helpful.
Word Builder
The word builder is pretty self-explanatory, but here is an example for 5-8 word length. As you can see you can end up with a LOT of solutions, so you may wish to start with 3-6 word length quiz first.
Other Quiz Types
For the other quiz types listed previously, as I said I would only recommend the toughies to more advanced players as they are incredibly difficult. The only exception may be high-probability toughies, but again you will be seeing a LOT of solutions as it only takes missing one solution to be considered unsolved vs. solved. It’s much more important to know all the solutions for one or two answer alphagrams vs. 6+ solutions. For blank bingos, this are in my opinion the most mentally exhausting quiz type, so I would only do this if you know what you are getting in to!
Conclusion
Aerolith daily quizzes are a great way to improve and especially maintain word knowledge. For some people (myself included) I switched after I got tired of cardboxing, but you can of course do both, or just do Aerolith. I do recommend using Aerolith only after you have studied a word length pretty extensively via a cardbox quiz in Zyzzyva or Anki. However Aerolith alone might be fine for very short words (2-4) as you can see them all pretty quickly by doing the quiz each day. What is most important is to make these quizzes a daily part of your word study routine.