What happens in Mayu when you forget a Telugu word?

Rating a card Again tells Mayu's scheduler you did not recall the word, and that sets off a specific chain of updates rather than a vague penalty. If the card was already in the review state, this counts as a lapse: its state flips to relearning, and a lapses counter on the card goes up by one. The scheduler, which runs on the FSRS algorithm, then recalculates two numbers for that card, stability and difficulty, using everything it already knew plus this new miss. Stability typically drops sharply and difficulty typically rises, and a new due date gets set much sooner than it would have been. None of that erases what you had learned. The card does not go back to being new, and the miss itself is not thrown away either; it gets logged right alongside the updated numbers.

You stared at malli (మళ్ళీ, again) for a solid three seconds and then tapped Again anyway. Somewhere between your thumb and the next card, four different numbers just moved. Not one of them is a punishment.

What changes on the card the instant you tap Again?

Which change happens depends on the state the card was already in, because Mayu tracks four of them: new, learning, review, and relearning. Again is one of four ratings (Again, Hard, Good, Easy) fed into ts-fsrs, the library that runs the scheduling math, and its state machine decides what happens next, not a rule Mayu adds on top. A card already in the review state, meaning you had graduated past the initial learning steps, gets knocked into relearning. That transition is what a lapse actually is. A card still in new or learning when you rate it Again typically just repeats a learning step instead; it has not built up enough of a track record for a lapse to mean much yet.

Mayu's take: relearning is not a scarier word than it sounds. It is just the state a card sits in while it earns its way back to review.

Why do stability and difficulty move so much on one miss?

They move because FSRS treats a lapse as stronger evidence than a Hard rating that its estimate of how well you know that word was wrong. Stability stands in for how many days you can go before your recall probability drops to the target retention, and difficulty is how demanding a card has been for you specifically. On a lapse, the algorithm recalculates both from the card's existing values plus this new miss, and the typical result is stability dropping sharply while difficulty ticks up. That is the FSRS model doing its usual job, just with a bigger correction because you gave it bigger news.

Mayu's take: a card whose stability just fell off a cliff is not broken. It just told the scheduler something true.

Does a lapse erase what you had already learned about that word?

No, because relearning and new are different states with different starting points. A brand new card starts at zero: no reps, no stability worth mentioning. A lapsed card carries its whole history into the recalculation, so the new stability and difficulty are computed from where they already stood, adjusted downward, not wiped and restarted. A word you have reviewed twenty times and lapse on once still keeps more of its stability than a card you are seeing for the first time. Sare (సరే, okay) is basically what the system does with a lapse: it adjusts and moves on, it does not spiral.

Mayu's take: one miss on a word you have known for months is a blip in the numbers, not a demotion.

Does Mayu keep a record of the miss itself, or just move the due date?

Both, because every rating produces a review log alongside the updated card state, not instead of it. That log holds the rating you gave, the state and numbers before and after, and when it happened, so the miss is not thrown away even though only the current numbers drive tomorrow's queue. One thing that log is not is a stored recall probability. Mayu never saves a percentage chance you will remember a word; that number gets recalculated fresh from the current stability and elapsed time, every time it is needed, because it decays by the second and a saved value would already be wrong.

Mayu's take: the schedule only cares about your current numbers. The history sits quietly next to them in case anyone ever wants to look.

Words for the moment right after a miss

Try it

• Next time you genuinely blank on a card, rate it Again and then check its new due date. It will move a lot sooner than a Good would have set it, no matter how long the word had been holding steady before.
• Notice what state the card was in before the miss. A card already in review lapses into relearning; a newer card just repeats a step, no lapse counted.
• Let a lapsed word come back on its own schedule instead of hunting for it to re-drill early. The new due date already accounts for the miss.
• Compare how a word you have lapsed on once feels against a word you are learning for the first time. The lapsed one still comes back faster, because its stability never hit zero.

FAQ

Does rating a card Again send it back to being brand new? No. It moves to relearning, a different state that keeps the card's existing stability and difficulty as the starting point for the next calculation, not a reset to zero.

Does every Again rating count as a lapse? Only if the card was already in the review state. A card still in new or learning that gets rated Again typically repeats a learning step instead, and the lapses counter does not move.

Does Mayu keep any record of the specific review where I missed a word? Yes. Each rating produces a review log with the rating, the state before and after, and a timestamp, stored alongside the updated card, separate from the schedule.

Why does stability drop so much from just one missed word? FSRS reads a lapse as a strong correction to its model of that card, stronger than a Hard rating, so it adjusts stability and difficulty by more than a normal review would.

Try Mayu

Rate one for real next time you blank on it, then watch where the due date lands.