Paira blog
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Five habits that quietly break your review schedule
None of these look like mistakes while you are doing them. All five leave you with a schedule that describes a version of your memory that does not exist.
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Making a set public: what other people can do with it
Publishing a set makes it findable, studiable and copyable. Here is what that means in practice, including the part people worry about: whether someone can change your work.
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Streaks, and the freezes that save them
One freeze covers one missed day, and it is all or nothing: two days missed with only one freeze in hand costs you the streak and keeps the freeze.
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Studying one set with other people: four live modes
Four live modes put someone on the other side of your vocabulary practice. Each changes what a correct answer buys — a team goal, damage to a boss, a race, or a clue only you can see.
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How the weekly leagues promote and demote
Seven tiers, a weekly reset, and one rule that stops empty accounts drifting to the top: you cannot be promoted on a week where you scored nothing.
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XP, combos and how levels are calculated
Ten level titles, a quadratic curve between them, and one multiplier that can double a round. The exact numbers behind the bar at the top of the screen.
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Scramble: spelling a word without a keyboard
Recognising a spelling and producing one are different. Scramble hands you the letters in the wrong order and finds out which you have.
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The nine ways to study a set, and when each one helps
Nine modes is a lot of choice for a decision you make every session. Here is what each one actually asks of your memory, and which to reach for at each stage of knowing a word.
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Why a True or False answer counts for half
Not every correct answer is the same amount of evidence. A fifty-fifty guess that happens to be right should not move your mastery as far as typing the word from memory, and it does not.
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Typing "cop" for "çöp": how typos are judged
A keyboard without Turkish characters should not cost you the answer. Neither should one slipped finger. But a three-letter word has to be exact, and that is not an oversight.
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Weak, due and new: the three kinds of word in your queue
Every word in a set is in exactly one of three states, and the difference between due and weak is the one worth understanding — a weak word can arrive early.
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Smart Learn: the question gets harder as you get better
Recognising a word and producing it are different skills. Smart Learn moves each word from one to the other as your mastery of it climbs, and moves it back when you slip.
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Why an example sentence makes a word stick
A word pair on its own tells you what something translates to. It does not tell you when you would ever say it, and that is usually the part you are missing.
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Cleaning up a messy word list before you import it
Most import problems are one of five things, and all five are fixable with find-and-replace before you paste anything in.
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Getting a vocabulary list out of an EPUB
Tools that pull every unique word out of an EPUB work fine. The problem is the output: thousands of words, most of which you already know, with no way to tell which is which.
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Learning vocabulary from the book you are actually reading
The usual advice is to keep a vocabulary journal while you read. That works until the sixth interruption. Reading inside Paira collapses the lookup and the note into one tap.
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How many new words a day? Let the session decide
Every number you pick for words-per-day ignores the reviews those words generate tomorrow. Paira splits each session into review, new and refresh, so the intake adjusts to how you are actually doing.
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Why your next review is in 1, 2, 4, 7 or 14 days
Six mastery levels, five intervals you can actually land on, and a wrong answer that skips the schedule entirely. The exact numbers Paira uses to decide when you see a word again.
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Moving a Quizlet set somewhere else
Your sets are word pairs, and word pairs travel as plain text. Export from Quizlet, paste into Paira, and let the importer detect the separator for you.
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How to turn a TXT file into a vocabulary set
Put one word pair per line and Paira works out the rest: it tries five separators, picks the one that parses the most lines, and reports every line it could not read.
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How Paira decides when to show you a word again
A short overview of how scheduling works in Paira, and links to the posts that cover each part of it properly.