Search cards and decks

Search every deck by word, pinyin, meaning or note. Accents, tone marks and the ʻokina are optional.
Docs · 1 of 9 Overview

How Verso works

An open spec for Verso, the flash-card desk. What it does, how each part behaves, and what it keeps on your device.

Verso is a flash-card site. The name comes from bookbinding: the verso is the back of a page. Each card has a prompt on the front and the answer on the back. You flip the card, say whether you knew it, and move on.

These pages describe the whole app as it works today, the same way a spec would. They’re written for anyone curious about Verso, and they add technical detail where it helps.

The short version

  • No accounts. There’s nothing to sign up for and no login.
  • Your data stays in your browser. Settings, recent searches, your packs and your best scores are kept in your browser’s localStorage on this device. Nothing is sent to a server. Privacy and storage lists every key.
  • Static pages. Every page, deck and card is built ahead of time and served as plain files. Nothing is scraped or generated while you browse.
  • No spaced repetition. Verso doesn’t schedule reviews. You play a deck, or a hand dealt from several, in rounds until you’ve cleared every card, then decide what to play next.

What’s in it

The content is split into subjects, each subject into categories, and each category into decks of about 25 cards.

  • 中文 (Chinese): words from the new HSK lists, levels 1–6. Each card shows simplified characters, their pinyin, and an English meaning. HSK 7–9 is marked Coming soon.
  • ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian): words from hula practice, in five small decks. Each one has an English meaning and a Chinese one, so you can learn it through either language. A First words topic is marked Coming soon.

Anything marked Coming soon still shows up while you browse, but it has no cards yet and can’t be studied.

Getting around

  • Home (/) has a Play button, a quick search box, a short animated demo of a round, a row of featured packs, and a tile for each subject. Once you’ve played a mix, a Continue link reopens it.
  • A subject (/chinese) lists its levels or topics, with a button to play all of its decks.
  • A category (/chinese/hsk-1) lists its decks, with the first and last word of each one, and a button to play them all.
  • A deck (/chinese/hsk-1/deck-01) opens as a word list: every card on one page, with a filter box. Its Play button starts a round.
  • The study screen (/chinese/hsk-1/deck-01/study) fills the screen with one card at a time. See Studying a deck.
  • Play (/play), linked from the header on every page, is where you pick packs or build a mix of decks, which are then dealt a hand at a time. See Play and packs.
  • Search opens over any page with ⌘ K, Ctrl K or /. See Search.

The header holds Docs, Play, search, and a sun and moon button that switches between light and dark mode. On a phone each one is just its icon. On wider screens Docs and Play show their names, and search shows its shortcut. On your first visit Verso starts in your system’s mode and remembers it from then on.

In these docs

Using Verso

How it works