Each button is a decision about when your child sees that card next. Tricky sends it back to the beginning, Got it moves it along the standard ladder, and Too easy makes every future gap for that card grow faster.
At a glance
| Button | Seen again in this session? | Next review | Long-term effect on that card |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tricky | Yes | Tomorrow | Ladder restarts; all future gaps permanently shorter |
| Got it | No | The next rung up | Gaps grow at the standard rate |
| Too easy | No | The next rung up | Gaps grow faster from now on |
Got it — the normal case
This is the button for "I knew that, with a bit of thought". It moves the card up the ladder: 1 day, then 6, then 15, then 38, then 90 — and 90 days is the ceiling, so a well-known card settles into once-a-term.
Notice that Got it does not make future gaps grow faster. It is deliberately neutral. A child who presses Got it on everything gets the standard, sensible schedule.
Too easy — the accelerator
Too easy does everything Got it does, and additionally makes that card's gaps grow more steeply for the rest of its life. On our ladder the sequence becomes 1, 6, 16, 45, then the 90-day ceiling — reaching a term-long gap a step sooner.
Used honestly, this is how your child buys back time: genuinely trivial cards stop taking up review minutes. Used to rush through a session, it quietly buries material they do not actually know. The tell, if you ever look, is a child pressing Too easy on everything and then being surprised in a test.
Tricky — not a punishment
The most important button, and the one children are most reluctant to press.
Pressing Tricky does four things:
- The card comes back later in the same session — relearning, not a mark against them.
- It is scheduled again for tomorrow.
- Its ladder restarts at 1 day.
- Its future gaps become permanently shorter, because the card has shown it is harder for this child than average.
To make the numbers concrete: a card that would have gone 1 → 6 → 15 → 38 → 90 will, after one Tricky, go 1 → 6 → 13 → 28 → 61 → 90. It visits your child more often for the rest of its life. That is the correct response to difficulty, and it happens automatically.
What does not happen: no points are deducted, no streak breaks, and you are not sent a report saying your child found something hard. This is deliberate. A child who feels judged for pressing Tricky will stop pressing it honestly, and every gap after that is computed from a lie.
What happens after four Tricky presses
If a card has been failed four times, more drilling is not the answer — the child has a misconception, not a memory problem. At that point the card is flagged and the tutor is told, so the next session can re-teach the idea rather than the card testing it again. That mechanism has its own article: when a card gets stuck.
Why there is no fourth button
The review page has exactly three buttons and will keep exactly three.
The child is answering one question — how did that go? — and every answer feeds the schedule. A fourth control such as "never show me this again" looks like it belongs in the row, but it is a different question entirely, and it arrives at the worst possible moment: just after a child got something wrong, when they are least able to judge whether the card deserves to exist.
It would also hand the daily habit an exit. Housekeeping is a separate mood from practice, so it gets a separate room — the tidy-up page, where cards can be locked in or put away with a clear head.
If your child mis-taps
They can undo it. Grading also works by swiping — right for Got it, left for Tricky — and swipes go astray, so the card just graded offers a quiet "Undo" that puts the schedule back exactly as it was. It is available for the most recent card only, and only for a few minutes, because undo is for fixing a slip rather than reopening last week.
FAQ
What happens if my child presses Tricky?
The card reappears later in the same session, comes back tomorrow, and its future gaps stay permanently shorter. Nothing is deducted and you are not shown it as a score.
Is Too easy the same as Got it?
No. Both keep the card moving, but Too easy also makes every future gap for that card grow faster. Used honestly it saves your child time; used to rush it hides gaps.
Why isn't there a Skip button?
Because a skip is a different question from how did that go, asked at the moment a child is least able to answer it. Cards that genuinely should not be in rotation are dealt with elsewhere, on the tidy-up page.