The Learning Engine
Behind every question is a tiny ledger. This page explains the ladder every fact climbs, the Times Table Map colours, and the single most important design rule in the app: mastery cannot be earned in one sitting.
Every fact your child practises climbs a ladder. A right answer moves it up one rung, a wrong answer moves it down one and brings it back sooner. Nothing reaches the top in one day, and that's deliberate: coming back tomorrow is what makes it stick.
The map shows the whole ladder at a glance. Coral facts need another look, amethyst ones are getting there, aqua ones are mastered.
Five rungs per fact
Every times-table fact (like 7 × 8), every spelling word, every grammar item and every transition scenario has its own record: how often it's been seen, how often it was right, how fast, and which rung it sits on, from 1 to 5. (The ladder is a Leitner box system, if you want the name.)
Show me the exact rules
- A correct answer moves an item up one box, but only once per session (see below).
- A wrong answer always moves it down one box, immediately, no exceptions. It also flags the item as recently wrong, which brings it back within the next few questions and again soon after, fading as it's re-learned.
Why mastery takes more than one good session
An item can climb at most one box per session. Answering 7 × 8 correctly ten times in one round moves it up once, not ten times. Reaching Box 5 (mastered) therefore requires correct recalls across separate sessions. Returning on later days gives the strongest spacing, but the engine's hard rule is one climb per session.
The Times Table Map
For a new player, Math Quest first shows a warm explanation while it learns from the first ten answers. After answer ten, the home screen reveals every fact in your child's range as a coloured square: the whole 12 × 12 grid at a glance (extendable to 20 × 20 in Settings).
It updates live as they play, and every square is tappable: tap 7 × 8 and the next round quietly targets it. Spell Quest follows the same first-ten-answers reveal, then opens the Word Garden: one gem per word, coloured by box, deliberately text-free so the spelling can't be read off the screen.
Fix-it: what happens on a wrong answer
In untimed play, a miss doesn't just flash red and move on. The correct answer is shown and your child types (or taps) it once before the round continues. This is remediation, not assessment. Fix-it records nothing. The real re-test happens when the engine schedules that item again later, because copying an answer you can see and recalling it days later are different skills, and only the second one counts.
What speed has to do with it
For number facts, the goal isn't just accuracy. It's automatic recall, fast enough that working memory stays free for the actual problem. That's why answers under 1.5 seconds earn a bigger XP bonus, and why Rocket Round (25 questions, 6 seconds each) exists. Speed pressure is confined to modes that announce it; Adventure and the focused quests are untimed.
Next: how the app picks the next question, with the exact weighting.