Play and packs

A deck page plays one deck. Play goes further: pick any number of decks, from any subjects, and Verso deals them out as hands of shuffled cards. Each hand plays just like a deck, in rounds, until you’ve cleared it. Then the next hand is dealt from the cards that are left.

Where to start

• The header’s Play link opens the Play page from anywhere, at any screen size. A small badge on it counts the decks waiting in your mix.
• Home has a big Play button, and a Play a pack row with the featured packs. Once you’ve played a mix, a Continue link under the button reopens the last one you started, such as “Continue HSK 1 complete →”.
• A subject page has a button such as Play all 5 decks, which plays every deck in the subject. A category page does the same for its decks. Both say “Mixed, a hand at a time”.
• A deck page has Play, which plays that one deck on the study screen. Under it, Add to favorites and Add to mix keep the deck for later.

The Play page

The Play page, /play, is titled “Pick what to play”. It has three sections, then a bar that stays at the bottom of the screen.

Your packs

Packs you’ve saved, and your favorites, under the note “Kept in this browser”. The section only appears once you have one. Favorites come first, as a pack called Favorites with a heart.

Curated packs

Ready-made packs: “Play one straight away, or add it to your mix.”

Every pack card, curated or yours, shows:

• the subjects it draws from, such as 中文 and ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi
• its name, and a curated pack’s one-line summary
• how many decks and cards it holds, such as “12 decks · 300 cards”
• a small ring such as 2/12 once you’ve cleared any of its decks (see Combos, clears and best scores)
• a mix button that reads + Add to mix, 3 of 12 in mix, or ✓ In your mix, and adds or removes all of the pack’s decks
• Play, which starts the pack straight away
• on your own packs, a ⋯ button that opens Edit pack

On a phone, each row of packs scrolls sideways.

Build a mix

Every playable deck, grouped by subject and then by category, under the heading “Pick whole levels and topics, or single decks. Mix subjects as you like.”

• A category row has a checkbox labeled “All of HSK 1” that picks or drops all of its decks. It shows a dash when only some are picked, and the row adds ”· 3 picked”.
• Opening a row shows its decks as chips, such as “Deck 1 · 25 cards”. Tap a chip to pick it. A ✓ before the name means you’ve cleared it. The heart in the chip’s corner adds it to your favorites.

The play bar

The bar at the bottom of the Play page sums up your mix and starts it:

• What’s picked, such as “3 decks · 75 cards”, or “Pick decks to play”. When the mix holds exactly the decks of a curated or saved pack, the pack’s name comes first.
• Save keeps the mix as one of your packs. It’s left out when the mix already is a pack.
• Clear empties the mix.
• Cards per hand: 25, 50, 100 or All. The default is 25.
• Play starts the mix.

Short messages, such as “Saved “Week 1” to your packs”, appear above the bar for a few seconds.

Your mix

Your mix is the set of decks you’ve picked but not saved as a pack. It’s kept in this browser, so it’s still there after you play it, reload, or come back another day. Other open tabs see the same mix, and the header’s badge follows it. You can add decks to it on the Play page or from any deck page.

Saving a pack

Choose Save in the play bar, or Save this mix as a pack on a hand’s summary. A small sheet asks for a name, up to 40 characters, and suggests one from the decks, such as “HSK 1 · 3 decks”. Save pack adds it to Your packs.

You can keep up to 50 packs. At 50, saving says “You have 50 packs, the most there’s room for. Delete one to save another.”

Editing a pack

The ⋯ on one of your packs opens Edit pack:

• Rename: edit the name and press Rename.
• Change decks: loads the pack’s decks into Build a mix, under the heading “Change the decks in “Week 1””. The play bar shows “Editing Week 1” with Cancel and Save changes. Either way, your own mix is put back afterwards.
• Duplicate: adds a copy named “Week 1 copy” right after it.
• Copy link: copies the pack’s play link.
• Delete: removes it, with an Undo button in the message that follows.

Favorites

The heart keeps a deck in your favorites. You’ll find it on each deck page, where it reads Add to favorites or Favorite, and on each deck chip on the Play page. Your favorites show up as the Favorites pack, which plays all of them together.

Hands

How cards are dealt

All of the cards in what you picked make one pile, in deck order. Each hand takes as many cards as Cards per hand says; All deals everything in one hand.

• With Shuffle on (the default), a hand is drawn at random from all of the cards that are left, so it mixes every deck you picked.
• With Shuffle off, each hand takes the next cards in order: deck by deck, card by card.

No card is dealt twice in a session. A hand of the last few cards can be smaller than the rest.

Playing a hand

A hand plays like a deck: swipe, flip, rewind, and go round again until every card is cleared. See Studying a deck. A few things are different when the cards come from more than one deck:

• Each card’s corner names its deck, such as “HSK 1 · Deck 3”, and the round number moves up into the top bar.
• A round’s summary adds By deck: what you got and what you’re still learning in each deck, the decks with the most to learn first. It lists four, then All 6 decks shows the rest.
• In the settings sheet, Deck becomes Hand, with Restart hand.
• When the hand mixes subjects, the Prompt side buttons read “Term first” and “Meaning first”, and each subject with more than one answer language gets its own Answer language row. See Learning through another language.

Once you’ve cleared a hand, its summary offers:

• Deal the next 25, while there are cards left to deal
• Play again, which plays the same hand from round 1
• Back to packs, which returns to the Play page, as ✕ and Esc do
• Save this mix as a pack, when you didn’t start from a curated pack. It reads ”✓ In your packs” when you’ve already saved these decks.
• where you are, such as “Hand 2 · 250 cards left to deal” or “Hand 12 · all 300 cards dealt”

The hands you’ve played are held only in the page’s memory. Reloading starts again from hand 1.

Play links

Every mixed session has its own address, so you can bookmark it or send it to someone:

• d lists decks by id, separated by commas. A category’s id stands for all of its decks, which keeps the link short; the Play page uses the shortest list it can.
• name is the name shown in the top bar. Without one, the mix is named after what it holds: the deck, the category, something like “HSK 1 · 3 decks”, up to three categories joined with ”+”, or “Mix of 8 decks”.
• Ids that don’t match a playable deck are skipped. A link with none left shows “Nothing to play”, with a link back to the Play page.

Your packs live in your browser, so a pack’s copied link carries its decks and name rather than the pack itself.

Loading cards

A mixed session downloads only the decks the current hand draws from, as small files such as /data/decks/chinese/hsk-1/deck-01.json, and each deck only once per visit. “Dealing…” shows while they load. If they can’t be loaded, “The cards didn’t load” offers Try again.