If you’ve read our [[Cardboxing 101]] article and are eager to learn more about the subject, great! Here are some tips and tricks to help you build and maintain your cardbox with the best of them. This article focuses on cardboxing in the [[NASPA Zyzzyva]] (NZ) desktop application or [[NASPA Zyzzyva Mobile]] (NZM) mobile app.
It’s best to start building your cardbox on a system where you’ve already built up a quiz history, because NZ and NZM will give you credit for words that you seem to know well, planting them deeper in the cardbox. If you’ve never done quizzes before, everything you add to the cardbox is going to land in Cardbox 0 and be due immediately. If you’re just starting out with a new NZ or NZMinstallation, be sure to sync your data with your habitual NZ setup or NZM installation first, to bring that quiz history up to date in both places, and, for the love of all that is good and holy, please be careful not to sync a new and virtually empty mobile cardbox/quiz-stats database over any older desktop database that you wanted to keep — read the warnings in the mobile app! For information about data synchronization, see [[Data Synchronization in NASPA Zyzzyva and NASPA Zyzzyva Mobile]] and the related help text in NZM’s ''Quiz'' tabNZ and NZM.
== Where to Start? ==
As we pointed out in the introductory article, with cardboxing as with any abstruse study, discouragement is the enemy. With that in mind, it’s almost always best to start small.
Maybe we should start with that word, <tt>ABSTRUSE</tt>. Looks like a good word to know, and one that most expert players wouldn’t easily see in their rack of <tt>AEUBRST</tt> as they fixate on finding a place for <tt>ARBUTES</tt> or <tt>BURSATE</tt> (or <tt>SURBATE#</tt>, if they play the International English lexicon). NASPA Zyzzyva tells us that <tt>ABSTRUSE</tt> is middlingly probable as eight-letter words go, #12184 out of 31523, but, with its two <tt>S</tt>’s and its familiar meaning, it seems more worth knowing than, say, <tt>FROMENTY</tt> (#12126). So, we have to make a decision: Do we populate our cardbox by raw probability or by pattern, and how big do we go?
We recommend that you start by pattern, using defined groups of words that many word players have come to recognize as worth studying. (You definitely won’t enjoy the result if you populate your cardbox with the 12184 most probable eight-letter words.) You may have heard people talk about “stem” groups like <tt>TISANE?</tt> and <tt>SATIRE?</tt>, and these are definitely the ones to go with if you want to cardbox with seven-letter words and don’t know where to start. Or, maybe you’re not so concerned with long words and just want to know the “high fives” (words beginning or ending with four- or five-point letters) that can easily score 30 or 40 points when played in the right spot. Either way, a pattern search is where you should start.
If you’re using NZ on a desktop computer, you can do these searches quickly using the ''Search'' tab’s many predefined search specifications (e.g., ''Load Search…'' → [up a level] ''predefined'' → ''Top 7s By Stem'' → ''001 TISANE.zzs'') and its ''Belongs to Group'' condition. Run a search, see how many words it finds, then decide if this is a group worth studying. If so, right-click the list of found words and choose ''Add list to Cardbox…'' The NZM app can do basic pattern searches, like <tt>TISANE?</tt>and group searches, but for more complex searches you may want to consider populating the cardbox in NZ and then syncing it to NZM.
== Surviving the Early Days of Cardboxing ==
* '''Resist the urge to expand.''' Until you’ve figured out how to divide your cardbox into subgroups, keep all of the questions circulating and don’t add more words until you see that the daily due count is down to something manageable, between 20 and 100 questions, depending on your style and availability. Later on, when you do add more words, seeing those more familiar questions interspersed with the new ones will give you those small wins, and keep you on your toes, too.
* '''Turn on the sprinkler.''' A trick that some people use to break up big clods of cardbox questions is to designate Cardbox 15 as a “sprinkler” box. Since it would normally take many years for any question to reach Cardbox 15 “naturally”, you should feel free to change the cardbox schedule settings for that box to have a short ''Schedule'' value and a long ''Window'' value; then, as needed, you can tell NZ or NZM to move a clod of due questions to Cardbox 15, and they’ll magically reschedule themselves over a wider period of days. Having solved them correctly a few times, and when things are more under control, you can revisit the sprinkler box (where all of the correctly answered questions will still be, since there’s no higher box to advance to) and move the questions somewhere more fitting, like Cardbox 5, which will spread them out over a seven-day window.
* '''Phone a Friend.''' Maybe you know someone who’s cardboxing and wants to help you. There’s no shame in sharing! Any cardbox they’ve built is one you can copy and use. If they’re a NZ user, the database files are in their data directory under '''<tt>quiz/data</tt>''', arranged by lexicon, named '''<tt>Anagrams.db</tt>'''. If they’re strictly a NZM user and they use Zyzzyva’s data synchronization, they’re in their Dropbox cloud storage under '''<tt>Apps/Zyzzyva/quiz/data</tt>'''. (If you’re strictly a you use NZM user, then since its storage is walled off, you’ll have to run slot that process in reverse to sync the copied database back file into your own Dropbox storage and do a sync to bring it down to your mobile device.) After that, you’ll have a gently used cardbox that might conform to your solving abilities better than a brand-new one would.
== When It’s Time to Go Pro ==
=== What do the various rescheduling commands do? ===
The cardbox system keeps track of each question’s due date even after they come due, so you can always see how many days past due your questions are. Rather than moving individual questions between cardboxes as a way to reschedule them, you should get to know the ''Shift by By Days'' and ''Shift by By Questions Due'' actions in NZM’s ''Manage'' tab; in NZ, choose ''Tools'' → ''Reschedule Cardbox Contents…'' and look for the similarly named buttons. Both of these rescheduling commands have the same effect, which is to shift all questions forward or back by the same amount of time, the only difference being how that amount of time is calculated. The ''Reschedule by By Cardbox'' command is stronger; it scrubs all existing due dates, maintaining each question in its current box but with a new due date based on the ''Schedule'' and ''Window'' values — almost the same as what would happen if you deleted them all from the cardbox and then added them back. This latter command is useful after you’ve been studying just a subgroup of words in your cardbox for a while, when you switch back to the full cardbox, and find to your horror that the words you stopped studying are now way past due and want to be done before all the rest.
=== I want to cardbox on multiple devices. How should I go about it? ===
Both NZ and NZM can operate on cardboxes that are synced with Dropbox cloud storage, and in that way, multiple devices can sync their cardbox/quiz-statistics databases with each other. As of version 3.4.0, both NZ and NZM have buttons to sync “actively” with Dropbox, without you having to install the Dropbox application. In the case of NZ up to version 3.3.0, you won’t see any mention of syncing in the application interface, but you can use the ''Preferences'' dialog to make it look for its data directory in a location that Dropbox is syncing in the background (though NZ doesn’t actually move the data for you, so you’ll have to do that yourself). NZM, on the other hand, ; this is programmed to known as “passive” sync actively with Dropbox, without an installed Dropbox app, and has a ''Sync'' button for that purpose). To bring multiple devices' Zyzzyva data directories into sync, they all need to target the same '''<tt>Apps/Zyzzyva</tt>''' folder in the same user's Dropbox cloud storage. (Important: If you are using NZM, you should sync your mobile devices to Dropbox first, because Zyzzyva's active -sync engine won't link up with a Dropbox app folder that it didn't create. Then, on so, we recommend you start your desktop devices, install the Dropbox application, set it up for automatic syncing sync relationship by doing an active sync of the '''<tt>Dropbox</tt>''' directory inside your home directoryhabitual Zyzzyva installation, then retarget NZ’s data directory to '''<tt>Dropbox/Apps/Zyzzyva</tt>''' and move or merge the one that has your “good” quiz data there so that Dropbox can manage them. Having done that, you’re ready to sync all of your devices through Dropbox.) When firing up any new NZ or NZM installation, press the ''Sync'' button, sign in to Dropbox and give permission when prompted, and then — please! — if you see prompts about conflicted items, read those questions before you agree to proceed with the sync. The first time you sync, there may be conflicts between older, useful cardbox/quiz-statistics databases on Dropbox and newer, but useless databases just established on your mobile device; if so, you should tell it to sync in one direction only, from Dropbox to your mobile device, by answering ''Yes'' to the first question and ''No'' to the second before answering ''Yes'' to start syncing. It will take a while, and it will try to keep your device awake, because NZM Zyzzyva’s active-sync engine isn’t programmed to pause a sync and finish it later; since iOS tolerates only short periods of background activity before killing an active app, you should let it run in the foreground. After one or more tries, having completed this initial sync, NZM Zyzzyva will only sync files that have changed, so it’ll be very quick. The one thing to remember, to avoid disappointment, is to sync when you start cardboxing and again when you stop, because otherwise you could end up with two or more devices that both think they have newer cardbox data, and this will be flagged as a sync conflict later on.
=== How do I move cardbox data forward when moving to a new lexicon? ===
There is one ''Anagrams'' cardbox for each lexicon, and the contents won’t automatically be brought forward when you begin to study a new one. Currently, NZM has no mechanism for importing cardbox/When a new lexicon is released and you want to move your quiz-statistics and cardbox dataforward, so, here are a couple of ways the simplest way is to do it, both involving Dropbox syncuse Zyzzyva’s import features. One is to use In NZ’s ''Cardbox'' tab to , target the new lexicon and use the , then click ''Import…'' button to merge and choose the old lexicon’s data into lexicon; in NZM’s ''Manage'' tab, target the new lexicon’s databaselexicon, then sync everything back to your mobile device. The other, which doesn’t require NZ, is to go to press ''Action'', choose '<tt>dropbox.com</tt>'Import From Lexicon'' and copy choose the old lexicon. Either way, your '''<tt>Anagrams.db</tt>''' file from one lexicon’s subdirectory under '''<tt>Apps/Zyzzyva/cardbox data will come over, along with the rest of the quiz/data</tt>''' to history for that lexicon. (That’s why, when the otherimport finishes, then go back to NZMthe number it reports will probably be larger than the number of questions in your cardbox.) If you use Zyzzyva’s data-synchronization feature, this update will sync, and create a new cardbox quiz that targets to all of your devices along with the new lexiconrest of your data directory.