I'm sorry that I haven't analyzed my second day games yet from the New Orleans tournament, but I've been obsessed with studying!
I was sick in bed for a couple days with only my laptop to keep me warm. So I downloaded the ISC interface (Wordbiz) on my laptop and found that it worked with my Windows Vista operating system. I hadn't played on ISC for over a year, and it provided some relief for my illness. (I won my first two games). Earlier, when I first got the laptop several months ago, I had tried to download Quackle, and it didn't work. So I assumed that all my favorite Scrabble programs wouldn't work with Vista.
After my success with Wordbiz, I decided to try to downloaded Zyzzyva. And it worked! But the version I had earlier on my desktop was 0.14, and this version was 1.0.4. They added some new features! I discovered the "Leitner" cardbox system feature and was hooked.
Basically, all new words are added to Cardbox 0. When you quiz, all missed words remain in Cardbox 0 and will remain there for the next day's quiz. But a correct answer will land the word in Cardbox 1, which will appear in your quiz 3-5 days later. Another correct answer will place that word in cardbox 2, which will appear in the quiz 5-9 days later. Subsequent correct answers will place that word farther away in your daily quizzes. Any missed word will go back to cardbox 0, which will be in the next day's quiz.
Knowing how memory works, I had been thinking about how to replicate the very same thing with actual physical notecards. Now I have software that will do it for me.
I'm only three days into the cycle and I am super excited about it. This system is the Holy Grail to memorizing words. I just need to learn how to tweak it, because I don't want my daily quizzes to be too long or too short. I think 100 words a day would be good. It takes me about 20 minutes to work through 100 anagrams.
My first lists were the most probable singletons (to review what had been my most studied word list) and all the new OWL2 power words (any word containing J, Q, X, or Z) from 4 to 7 letters in length. My favorite word from that list is FUNPLEX.
Posted by Mike Waugh at July 1, 2007 09:18 PM | TrackBack