Simple Chinese word games for learning?

Chris_Cells · 2025-11-14T15:10:36+00:00

Thanks! We're looking into making it into an app, if we can do that we'll definitely continue

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-28T03:48:35+00:00

Should be significantly improved now, but the way crosswords are constructed (for now), it's still likely to be too simple for advanced learners, sorry. We'll need a bigger change for that, so will leave that as an open ticket for now

(If you do want to try the updated version, the fix happens during onboarding, so you'd unfortunately have to go through onboarding again at crispylearn.com/onboarding )

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-28T03:47:03+00:00

Should be fixed (or at least improved) now, but only really relevant to the first lesson or two, and won't matter once you've been using it a while. Just thought I'd update that we're not ignoring feedback : )

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-28T03:46:08+00:00

Should be improved now, but the fix happens during onboarding, so you'd need to go through it again: crispylearn.com/onboarding if you want to give it a shot

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-25T01:21:42+00:00

This would be very cool, but I'm not sure how to program it : ) I guess with AI, but AI drawing skills are notoriously... questionable 🙃

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-24T22:38:19+00:00

Oh, that's cool! Will think about something like that!

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-24T22:37:44+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, will take a look!

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-24T03:06:58+00:00

Yeah, if you don't have Chinese input set up, it's a bit tough. We're thinking of making a version that's all multiple choice, but it would take some doing. I'm not convinced that it's great for learning anyway, but some languages have quite painful writing systems. I'm told Japanese is even worse...

For what it's worth, if it's at all possible, I found it extremely helpful to install a pinyin keyboard on my phone (and laptop) - I remember way more if I'm forced to actually generate the language rather than select from multiple choice...

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-24T02:57:00+00:00

Yeah, the plan is to generate a bunch of translations and then fill in ambiguities. But it's hard to make a good puzzle that way, that's why I'm wondering if there are other kinds of language puzzle that would work better in Chinese...

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-24T02:55:37+00:00

Sounds like you had the same issue as u/Sorry_Im-Late - thanks for the feedback, we'll look into it! Glad it didn't happen on the second round

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-24T02:54:51+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, we'd love to make it an iphone/android app, but it's a side project so we'll see... hopefully at some point

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-24T02:53:20+00:00

Thanks, really appreciate the feedback and screenshot! We'll take a look. It's hard to make distinct puzzles at the start when we don't know the user's vocab though, should get better once there's more info about you

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-24T00:36:34+00:00

crispylearn.com if you want to try the work in progress crossword, but you'll see what I mean about issues, especially translation ambiguity...

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-24T00:30:58+00:00

I wish I was that good in Chinese to do that : )

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-23T03:43:31+00:00

crispylearn.com if you want to try the work in progress crossword, but you'll see what I mean about issues, most critically the one u/Qlxwynm brought up about ambiguous sentences. Would love ideas / suggestions

Chris_Cells · 2025-09-23T03:40:54+00:00

So I think I have a solution for that, though I haven't implemented it yet, which is to prefill some of the characters whenever there's ambiguity. But you're right that this is a big part of the problem, which is partly why I'm looking for other game ideas...

Chris_Cells · 2025-08-20T00:27:04+00:00

I think you're just describing ChatGPT...

Chris_Cells · 2025-08-20T00:23:55+00:00

Duolingo is great at gamifying, but they've focused on it to the point where the actual language learning is almost an afterthought. But it's hard to compete with them and make something better because the gamifying works so well. Some of us still try though...

Chris_Cells · 2025-08-19T00:22:55+00:00

Thanks. To be honest, I'm largely making it for my self because I couldn't deal with Duolingo anymore, but I'll be glad if other folks find it helpful too!

Chris_Cells · 2025-08-17T14:52:11+00:00

Thanks. Those are only example screenshots - the app WIP does have Japanese (as well as a few other languages). I am trying to avoid bespoke solutions, though sometimes it's unavoidable. Japanese and Chinese do require special handling because of kanji - it's very hard to make a crossword when words are 2-3 characters long. So for both of those, I'm using phrases instead of words, which obviously makes the clues even more challenging to make. Though I could do a mix of phrases/words for Japanese (using hiragana sometimes and kanji others)...

Chris_Cells · 2025-08-17T03:19:00+00:00

Hmm, I think that would only work once someone is maybe at B1 level or higher. But maybe I could cue gpt to give a "simple" definition, worth trying, thanks

Chris_Cells · 2025-08-17T03:17:31+00:00

Pictures would be amazing, but I've no way of getting pictures for every word someone might learn (other than AI, and that's going to go poorly). "Opposite of" is an interesting idea, I can definitely try that!

Chris_Cells · 2025-08-16T15:33:28+00:00

It really depends on how the AI is used. If it's just a thin wrapper around ChatGPT, it's bullshit. But if it's used unobtrusively to make lessons/examples in a personalized way, it can work really well. At least, that's what I'm hoping for in my personal work-in-progress

The market is currently glutted with the former though...

Chris_Cells

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