Choose File->Quiz from the main menu to create a new Quiz tab. A Quiz tab can be used to create quizzes to increase your word knowledge and anagramming skills.
A quiz creation window will appear when creating a new Quiz tab, clicking the New Quiz button on an existing Quiz tab, or right-clicking on a word table and selecting Quiz from list. The quiz creation window includes a search definition area that is exactly the same as the one on the Search tab. Please see Searching for Words for more details about creating a search. The specified search will select a list of words to be used in quiz questions.
Once the list of words is determined, there are various ways they might be presented as quiz questions. These options are known as Quiz Types.
Anagram Quiz: In the Anagram quiz type, each unique combination of letters is used as a quiz question, with each question requiring anagrams as an answer. Each unique combination of letters will be presented with the letters in order as specified in the Quiz Question Display preferences.
The Anagram quiz type is most useful for improving one's anagramming skills, since each question will be a jumble of letters to be unscrambled. For example, with an Anagram Match condition of SATIRE?, the quiz questions will consist of AAEIRST, ABEIRST, ACEIRST, etc. With the randomize option checked, the questions will appear in random order.
Anagrams With Hooks Quiz: The Anagrams With Hooks quiz type is very similar to the Anagram quiz type. In an Anagrams With Hooks quiz, both anagrams and hooks are required as answers. To enter an anagram with its hooks, type the front hooks first, then a space, then the anagram, then a space, then the back hooks. As you do so, space characters will be replaced by colons to easily distinguish them visually. For example, if the quiz question is EPS, then in NWL2020 there is one correct answer, AO:PES:OT. This represents the word PES with its front hooks forming APES and OPES, and back hooks forming PESO and PEST. If all the correct hooks are not provided with the anagram, the response will be counted as incorrect.
Word List Recall: In the Word List Recall quiz type, the quiz has just one question, requiring the full list of words as an answer. This quiz type is useful when trying to recall a specific list of words from memory, such as the list of all three-letter words.
Hook Quiz: In the Hook quiz type, each word is used as a quiz question, with each question requiring hooks as an answer (all words that can be formed by adding a single letter to the front or back of the word).
There are currently two quiz methods available: Standard and
Cardbox. In a Standard quiz, the quiz consists of all questions
matching the search specification. In a Cardbox quiz, the quiz will only
consist of questions matching the specification that are in the cardbox
system and ready for review. For more details about Cardbox quizzes, see
the section about Cardbox Quizzes.
Quiz questions can be presented in various orders, which can be chosen
from the Question Order dropdown menu. Random: Questions are presented in random order. Alphabetical: Questions are presented in alphabetical order. In
the case of Anagrams or Anagrams With Hooks quizzes, questions are
alphabetized according to their alphagrams. Probability: Questions are presented in probability order. Playability: Questions are presented in playability order. In the
case of Anagrams or Anagrams With Hooks quizzes, each question is presented
according to the playability of its single anagram with the highest
playability value. Schedule: Questions are presented in cardbox schedule order. This
question order can only be used for Cardbox quizzes. Schedule (Cardbox 0 First): Questions are presented in cardbox
schedule order, except that questions in cardbox 0 are always presented
first regardless of when they are actually scheduled to be seen. This
question order can only be used for Cardbox quizzes. The Restore progress checkbox is used when loading previously
saved quizzes. See Loading and Saving
Quizzes for more details. A timer can also be configured for any quiz type to add extra challenge
to the quiz. Activating the Timer checkbox will allow you to specify
a time limit on a per response or per question basis. If the
per response timer is chosen, you will have the specified amount of
time to enter each individual response to a question. The timer will reset
itself each time a response is entered. If the per question timer is
chosen, you will have the specified amount of time to enter all
responses to a question. The timer will not reset itself after each
response is entered. When the quiz has been specified, click the OK button in the quiz
creation window to begin taking the quiz. Each quiz question requires a list of words as an answer. Enter each
word by typing the word in the input box near the bottom of the Quiz tab and
pressing Enter. If the word is a valid response, it will appear above the
input box with the word "Correct", and it will also be added to the response
list. If the word is not a valid response, it will appear above the input
box with the word "Incorrect". Once all the response words have been entered, click the Check
Answers button or press Enter in the empty input box. This will submit
the current word table as the final response to the quiz question. If any
valid responses were missed, they will appear in the word table with a green
background color. The number of correct words entered and the total number
of valid responses will also be displayed above the input box. For example,
if the quiz question is ACEIRST and the valid responses ATRESIC,
RACIEST and STEARIC were entered, then the forgotten word
CRISTAE will appear in the response list, and the message "Correct:
3 of 4" will appear above the input box. After clicking the Check Answers button and reviewing the judgment
of your response, click the Next button to continue to the next quiz
question. If the response was completely correct, but you would like it to be
counted as incorrect, click the Mark as Missed button. This may
happen if, for example, you guessed the correct answer but weren't sure of
it. Marking the response as incorrect will allow it to be noted for later
review. If the response was not completely correct, but you would like it
to be counted as correct, click the Mark as Correct button. During an Anagram quiz, the letters of the quiz question can be
rearranged by choosing a letter ordering from the Letter order
dropdown and clicking the Reorder button. If tile images are being
used, they can also be rearranged by dragging the tiles with the mouse. If the quiz is using a timer, the timer can be paused at any time by
clicking the Pause button. Unpause the timer by clicking the
Unpause button. If the timer runs down to zero, the correct
responses will be displayed automatically, as if the Check Answers
button were clicked. Flashcard Mode is a special quiz mode that is enabled when the
Flashcard Mode checkbox is activated. In Flashcard Mode, responses
are not typed; in fact, the input line is not even present. Instead,
hitting the Check Answers button reveals all answers as if they were
correctly entered. Responses are never counted as incorrect unless the
Mark as Missed button is clicked. Flashcard Mode is a very efficient way to review words, especially words
you may already be familiar with. The normal course of studying with
Flashcard Mode only requires hitting Enter repeatedly, because the keyboard
focus will toggle between the Check Answers button and the
Next button. Whenever you realize you wouldn't have been able to
answer a question correctly, just click the Mark as Missed button to
mark the question incorrect. At any time while taking a quiz or after a quiz is completed, you can
analyze your performance by clicking the Analyze Quiz button. A quiz
analysis window will appear. At the top of the window is a summary of the
current quiz, along with some statistics about your performance so far. Performance statistics are presented as Recall and Precision. Recall
represents the number of correct response words that were actually given as
responses. For example, if there were a total of 60 valid response words
throughout the course of a quiz, and you correctly identified 45 of them,
your Recall performance is 45/60, or 75%. Precision represents the number
of response words you provided that were actually correct. For example, if
you provided 50 responses and 45 of them were correct, your Precision
performance is 45/50, or 90%. The numerator of both Recall and Precision
will always be the same, since in both cases it represents the number of
correct responses you have given over the course of the quiz. The quiz analysis window also provides a list of Missed words and a list
of Incorrect words. The Missed list contains the valid response words that
were not provided by the quiz participant. This list generally consists of
words you may need to study a bit more. The Incorrect list contains the
incorrect responses provided by the quiz participant. This list generally
consists of invalid words you should try to forget. If you would like to save the list of missed words, or start a new quiz
using only those words, please see the section about Working with Word Tables.
When you are done analyzing your quiz performance, click the Close
button to close the quiz analysis window. Some quizzes are too long to be completed in a single session. For
this reason, Zyzzyva allows you to save your progress in the middle of a
quiz, and resume the quiz later where you left off. When taking a quiz, you
can click the Save Quiz button at any time to save your progress. If
the quiz was originally loaded from a saved quiz file, the quiz will
automatically be saved to that file. Otherwise, a window will appear to
allow you to save the quiz to a new file. Later, if you want to resume the quiz, choose File->Quiz from
the main menu, and click the Load Quiz button within the New Quiz
window. A window will appear to allow you to select the saved quiz file.
After choosing the file, the saved quiz will appear in the quiz
specification area. By default after loading a quiz, the Restore
progress checkbox will be activated. To start the quiz from the
beginning instead of resuming where it was left off, deactivate the
Restore progress checkbox. The checkbox will also become disabled if
the quiz specification is modified after loading it. After clicking
OK, the quiz will begin. Zyzzyva comes with a Cardbox Quiz mode that implements the Leitner
cardbox system, an effective method of studying for long-term retention. In
the Leitner system, each quiz question is assigned to a certain cardbox.
When questions are first added to the system, they are placed in cardbox
0. Every time a question is answered correctly, it is moved to the next
higher cardbox. For example, a question in cardbox 0, if answered
correctly, will be moved to cardbox 1. If answered correctly again the next
time it appears, it will be moved to cardbox 2, and so on. Every time a question is answered incorrectly, it is moved back to
cardbox 0, regardless of the cardbox it is currently in. For example, if a
question in cardbox 4 is answered incorrectly, it will be moved to cardbox
0, even though it had previously been correctly answered four times in a
row. As questions are moved to higher cardboxes, Zyzzyva schedules them to be
seen at longer intervals. For example, questions placed in cardbox 0 are
scheduled to be seen within about a day, whereas questions placed in cardbox
5 are scheduled to be seen approximately 30 days in the future. In this
way, when a question is answered correctly many times, it will be seen less
often than more difficult questions. If a question is always answered
incorrectly, it will be seen every day. Here is the full list of default schedule intervals for Zyzzyva
cardboxes: To add words to the cardbox system, do a search to find all the words
that should be added. Right-click the word list and choose "Add list to
Cardbox". A window will appear, containing the list of words. Select the
quiz type for which the words should be added to the cardbox system
(Anagrams, Anagrams with Hooks, or Hooks). All the words in the list can be added to a specific cardbox by selecting
the cardbox next to the Specify cardbox label. Normally all words
are added to cardbox 0. However, if the Estimate cardbox option is
checked, Zyzzyva will instead place each word in a cardbox corresponding to
your past performance on that word. For example, if you have correctly
responded to AEIRSST four times in a row in non-cardbox quizzes, and are
adding the word SATIRES to the cardbox system, it will initially be placed
in cardbox 4 instead of cardbox 0. This option can be very useful for
avoiding unnecessary repetition of relatively easy words, so selecting the
Estimate cardbox option is recommended. After the OK button is clicked, the words will be added to the
cardbox system. Any words placed in cardbox 0 will be available for
quizzing immediately. A word of caution: it is not a good idea to add large groups of words to
the cardbox system at the same time! If too many words are added to the
system at once, then it may take several days to complete a cardbox quiz
over all of them. This partially defeats the purpose of the cardbox system,
because missed questions will appear only after all the newly added
questions are answered, instead of every day. For best results, words
should be added to the cardbox system in reasonably sized chunks so that the
cardbox quiz can be completed or nearly completed each day. A cardbox quiz can be started in the same ways that a regular quiz can be started. The only difference is
that in the quiz creation window, the Cardbox quiz method should be
chosen instead of Standard. When the Cardbox quiz method is used,
the quiz will only consist of questions that match the search criteria and
are ready for review in the cardbox system. The questions will be presented
in order of their scheduled time. Normally, Zyzzyva takes care of assigning questions to their appropriate
cardboxes throughout the course of a cardbox quiz. However, at any time
during a cardbox quiz, the current question can also be manually assigned to
a cardbox. This can be done by selecting the desired cardbox next to the
Cardbox label, and clicking the Move button. For cardboxes 1
through 10, a shortcut for this action is to hold down the Ctrl key
and press the number of the cardbox to which the question should be moved.
For example, to assign the current question to cardbox 3, press
Ctrl-3. To assign the question to cardbox 10, press
Ctrl-0. To assign the question to cardbox 0, click the Mark as
Missed button. When manually assigning the current question to a
cardbox (other than 0), the question will also be marked as correct. If the number of cardbox questions available for review is getting too
large, or if there is a lapse of several days between study sessions, then
rescheduling the cardbox questions may help. To do this, choose
Tools from the main application menu, then choose Reschedule
Cardbox Contents. A window will appear, asking which words should be
rescheduled, and in what way the rescheduling should happen. The most common way to reschedule is by choosing the button that says
Shift words so this many are ready now. This will leave all
scheduled words in order, but will delay them or hasten them appropriately,
so only a certain number are ready for review at the present moment. The
benefit of rescheduling in this way is that words in higher cardboxes will
remain in order, so they can still be seen relatively soon after the
rescheduling. The other way of rescheduling can be done by choosing the button that
says Reschedule words according to their cardbox. By choosing this
method, words in the cardbox system will be rescheduled according to their
current cardbox. For example, words in cardbox 4 will be rescheduled to
appear in 15-25 days, regardless of when they were previously scheduled to
appear. Words in cardbox 0 will be available for quizzing immediately, and
they will be the only words available immediately after the rescheduling
operation. By default, all words in the cardbox system will be rescheduled, but a
limited set of words can be chosen by activating the button labeled
Reschedule only words matching search specification and specifying a
search. In general, words should not be removed from the cardbox system once they
are added. Zyzzyva will automatically take care of scheduling each question
appropriately. However, if too many questions have been added to the
system, and rescheduling does not help, removing words from the cardbox
system may be a useful option. To remove words from the cardbox system, do a search to find all the
words that should be removed. Right-click the word list and choose "Remove
list from Cardbox". A window will appear, containing the list of words.
Select the quiz time for which the words should be removed from the cardbox
system, then click OK. The words will be removed from the cardbox
system, but quiz statistics about them (number of times correct or
incorrect, last time correct, etc.) will remain intact. If the removed
words are ever added to the cardbox again with the Estimate cardbox
option selected, it is likely that they will be added to the same cardboxes
they were removed from. Experienced cardbox users may want to bring their cardbox data forward
from an older lexicon to a newer one. These data are stored in .db
files in your data directory. For your convenience, Cardbox tabs include an
"Import" button, so you can select another lexicon from which to
import cardbox and quiz-statistics data. After importing words to a cardbox, you may want to push the new words
back up to Cardbox 0 for immediate study. The easiest way to do this is to
do a search in the new lexicon to find just those words that are new to
this lexicon and that fit your personal criteria for cardbox study, then
right-click the list of found words and choose "Remove list from
Cardbox", then right-click again and choose "Add list to Cardbox";
this will move all the found words to Cardbox 0 without
destroying any of the quiz-statistics data that you imported.Question Order
Taking a Quiz
Flashcard Mode
Analyzing Your Quiz Performance
Loading and Saving Quizzes
Cardbox Quizzes
The Leitner Cardbox System
Adding Words to the Cardboxes
Taking a Cardbox Quiz
Rescheduling Cardbox Questions
Removing Words from the Cardboxes
Importing Words from Other Cardboxes
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