I meant to type in “waiter” but even though i mispelled that it allowed it??
Did you go in expecting “waiter” to be right? Presumably it’s a whitelisted synonym (answer they accept but don’t list). There’s also fuzzy spell-checking, which I’m sure you’ve encountered before.
Many words have whitelisted synonyms (and blacklisted answers as well, words that are close in spelling so they’d pass fuzzy spell-checking, but they’re obviously wrong)
7 Likes
So they’ll have a synonym “waiter” for “one sided”, but they won’t have “one” for “ground”? 
2 Likes
Often whitelisted synonyms are former names of things.
If I had to guess, this used to be called “waiter,” then people got mad that it’s not “one sided” like the kanji. So they made the radical’s main name “one sided” and in the process, “waiter” became accepted but not taught. Since they don’t want to screw over the people who learned it as “waiter.”
The 一 radical on the other hand, has always been “ground” as far as I know.
I’m sure you know already, but anyone can add “one” as a synonym for it if they want.
Also, generally speaking, they don’t put synonyms on radical pages since they are supposed to be names that are used exactly as written in the mnemonics.
4 Likes
If you have not figured out yet, WK is fairly forgiving of typos. Water and waiter share 85% of the same characters. That’s close enough for WK to give credit
If you want ‘ground’ to be ‘one’ , just add it. I hate clowns, so that radical became microphone for me.
1 Like
I assumed by level 32 they would have seen that many times, but maybe they’re just usually extremely careful 
1 Like
I would have thought so too, but ops question was specifically about waiter vs water, not the one everyone else was trying to answer.
Perhaps they just weren’t familiar with how WK parses the English input.
“Everyone else”
(looks around) >_>
Anyway, I did mention the fuzzy spell-checking, but I guess that wasn’t obvious enough.
(Also kind of expected a quick response clarifying which one it was that was confusing, but it didn’t come).
Looking back, though, yeah, you’re probably right that they were only asking about the spell checking. Just surprising that they’d get that far (and also I think they’re somewhat active on the forum, and it comes up regularly in discussions)
3 Likes
Aren’t you/we/I aware you/we/I are the hive mind of all WK users?
2 Likes
Yeah I did think it was waiter. I guess it might be whitelisted!
A few years ago WaniKani had a major name change in radicals. For example, “Spirit” radical used to be “Pelican” and “Roof” radical used to be “Helmet” (and “Roof” used to refer to 亼 radical, which was removed since then) and “One-Sided” used to be a “Waiter”.
However, the old names are still whitelisted even though they are no longer taught.
In other words, the Waiter quit his job, because the restaurant owner wasn’t paying him enough for his hard work and it was too One-Sided. But he still sometimes does part-time jobs as a waiter, whenever the payment is good enough.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.