I hear that.
Looks like Iām a little fat on apprentice, guru, and master. I think thatās expected until I start burning - the enlightened queue isnāt full yet.
Thatās an interesting strategy. Apprentice items represent under 2% of the total but on a daily basis, nearly half of the workload. On the other hand, thatās just kicking them down the road in a nearly-guaranteed-to-fail-later manner, and then theyāll become apprentice again. If you just stop doing lessons, the apprentice workload decays away within a couple of days anyway, leaving you with about half of the work until you start lessons again. And then guruās start falling off. Thatās what I would do if I could stand it for one or two more days to a week.
I think if you have that many leeches right now, given your Apprentice and Guru totals, the number is only going to increase as you continue. Itās best to address your leeches now, whether that means doing a sort of āround 2ā with re-learning them, or improving their mnemonics, etc. Whatever it takes. Itās extremely frustrating to have that many items cycling between Apprentice/Guru and it can sap all of your WK energy.
@Frosty-san Iād say your master-level number is about right. After looking at everyoneās numbers in this thread, Iād say about a 10% difference from nominal is normal (small sample size, though). Your master is almost dead on. Your guru is a little fat, and enlightened way low. I would guess that means you fail a lot of enlightened and burn reviews, which go down to guru. Does that check with your experience? (Still experimenting with the 'what do these numbers mean part)
Also, if it makes you feel any better, youāre within one standard deviation of everyone in this thread on every proportion but apprentice. And thatās within two. So youāre not totally out of the box.
It resulted in more leeches than most other people have, but my reviews were infinitely less tedious this way. Nothing was more frustrating than missing the same terms repeatedly, and having them come back over and over and overā¦
It also made leveling-up into something trivialā Iād passively learn ~80% of newly unlocked items while I forced them through Apprentice, and once they all came back as Guru items they were far less intimidating than they wouldāve been had I been playing by the rules at the get-go.
So yeah, I traded some up-front thoroughness for progression speed, quantity, and comfort. The SRS does its job though, Iāll get it all down ![]()
Here are my accuracy stats. Iāve never shared them before because they obviously canāt be taken at face-value, but, since Iāve shared how I used the override they might actually be interesting:

(I stopped using mnemonics around Level 10, so I started forcing all of the radicals through to Burn using the override.)
I do a kind of similar thing, without the override though. I donāt pay much attention to the mnemonics beyond reading them once. I let them fail in apprentice and let the SRS work. Same strategy, I think, but my recycle time is faster - if Iām going to fail, I know in 4 hours, and get to try again 4 hours after that. Iād be unhappy failing when theyāre up to guru or higher.
If I fail the same one multiple times, then I concentrate on the mnemonic a bit (or make my own). Thatās a lot fewer mnemonics to remember, since Iām only doing it for the worst offenders.
I installed the override at level 18, then around 25 started advancing all the new kanji and radicals through (to guarantee my level-ups ASAP), and somewhere around 40 it started to get too out-of-control and I began overriding every Apprentice.

I dont use the override but I do use double check and its retype feature sometimes. Some reason when I get a answer wrong I will be wait it was ć ć not ćć
I dont know if doing this little ācheatā will be bad in the long term
I do this from memory, If I have to go to the info and check the reading then ill just accept it as wrong.
Be careful with that, rendakuās are very important. If you forget the difference between ćć and ć ć for example, will you be able to recognize the word in a sentence if you hear it spoken? Will you guess the wrong pronunciation when youāre making conversation with a native? If your 1st guess is wrong, you can very easily confuse either yourself or your listener.
If all you want to do is read though, then maybe itās not so important to you. In that case, a little bit of trial and error isnāt so bad when you want to do a lookup.
Let my add mine here, to give you an idea.
My accuracy is high - almost 100%. Iāve been studying Japanese for 8 years and living here for 5 now. My wife is Japanese, my job is Japanese, I basically only use anything non-Japanese on the internet, so each level up has maybe 1 kanji that surprises me, most make sense from the get-go and are mine on first contact.
I also once had an account in the 20s here on WK, did a lot of Heisig and KKLC, Iām seeing kanji all day long, and so on.
All these explain how my accuracy is unnatural. Just take 10% of all numbers off anything higher and add it to lower levels - I think 80-90% accuracy will be what Iāll land on once I progress through the 20s, itās what most people have most of the time.
Anyway, Iāve just leveled up to 8, and now my dashboard looks like this:
So your living the life huh ![]()
Download an extension called āstylusā and then it should be called Wanikani breeze dark
Yup ![]()
It still requires some effort though, as disappointing as it may be, hehe.
Make sure you get the stroke order right if you are going to do writing practice. Else is is counter productive to learn something incorrectā¦
I am English speaking from Africa. Heisig primitives are so much better for me than WaniKaniās strange cultural references.
I try to put them as alternatives in WaniKani but sometimes I use them in reviews and then have to put them in later.
I found a WaniKani spreadsheet a while back, has anyone added a column for Heisig primitive names?
Nope, didnāt find anything, but I put them as alternatives.
Are you struggling with kanji or with vocabulary?
If itās with Kanji I found that the easiest way is to learn a word that actually uses the reading, or something that will make you relate to it. It depends on the kind of person you are, normal mnemonics donāt really work for me you may have the same issue where you need to find an alternate path.
Silly example:
Oh Iām having issues with ē
I go ahead and learn the word ēåļ¼åµļ¼
Maybe using a word that Iām familiar with like āTamagotchiā
Now I never forget āćć¾ā
Thatās just an example but you get the idea, I put an example from level 2 because I just started and Iām trying to advance to my actual level in WK so I donāt know what kind of stuff shows up at level 9.
Yours looks a lot like mine. I got like this because I took a 3-month+ break during the summer after I hit level 7 and came back this month. My accuracy is more than 90%. I donāt think itās something to worry about. After my break, getting back into things was difficult, but if I review consistently I think that Iāll become more comfortable with my guru items. Good luck.
Itās really the kanji reading mostly .The meanings I have no problem with.




