Daily Kanji Challenge
Play the same date-stable 12-prompt Kanji set for the whole day, with a fixed mix of meaning, reading, reverse recall and study levels.
One deterministic Kanji set per date
Daily Kanji is a specialist challenge, not a random page refresh. The date is part of the seed, so two fresh browsers opening the same date receive the same sequence. Replaying today does not silently replace the set with easier or different characters. That makes the challenge shareable in spirit without requiring an account or server-generated puzzle ID.
The set has exactly 12 prompts. Four test typed English meaning recall, four test typed reading recall, and four use reverse English-to-kanji choices. The order is deterministically shuffled after selection, so a session does not arrive as four obvious blocks of the same question type.
Balanced across five study bands
A daily challenge drawn uniformly from all 2,211 characters would overwhelmingly favor the largest N1 group. V0.61 avoids that imbalance. Each date uses a fixed level mix of N5 3, N4 3, N3 2, N2 2 and N1 2. That keeps foundational characters present every day while still exposing intermediate and advanced material.
The level labels are community study groupings sourced through OpenJLPT, not official JLPT test specifications. The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test no longer publishes a definitive itemized vocabulary/kanji specification, so the Daily does not claim that these 12 prompts predict a JLPT result. Their purpose is repeatable retrieval practice across a broad difficulty range.
Meaning and reading require production
Meaning prompts are typed. You see a kanji and produce one accepted English meaning. Reading prompts also require typing and accept a listed on or kun reading in kana or common romaji. A first miss is recorded as a real miss, but you receive one clean retry before the answer is revealed. The Daily score still uses first-attempt accuracy, which keeps the score comparable without wasting the learning value of a recovery attempt.
Reverse prompts start from English and use four kanji choices. Those prompts are limited to primary meanings that are unique within their level pool, preventing ordinary questions where two choices could reasonably match the same broad gloss.
A separate Daily streak for Kanji
Completing Daily Kanji updates `japaneseKanjiStats.daily`, not the six-game Daily Score. The Kanji streak is separate from Daily Kana, Daily Japanese Vocabulary and Today’s 6. That separation protects the historical brain-game Daily contract while still giving language learners a reason to return.
Practice and review are also local to this browser. The page does not create a classroom grade, JLPT-equivalent score, population percentile or global rank. If local storage is cleared, the local history disappears. The product is intentionally transparent about that boundary.
What happens to missed Kanji?
An actual first-attempt miss enters Weak Kanji and is due immediately. Correct first attempts move through visible 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30-day stages. Due + Weak Review can then mix meaning, reading and safe reverse prompts. Three correct Review attempts retire an item from the weak queue while scheduled review can continue through its local interval stage.
This creates a useful loop from a short daily challenge into targeted follow-up: discover a weak character in Daily, review it, then use focused N5–N1 Practice when you want more volume. It is more useful than a daily score that simply disappears after completion.
Source-backed data and attribution
The release freezes all five OpenJLPT Kanji CSV source files inside the full Project archive and records a SHA-256 for each. The data includes character, community JLPT study band, stroke count, grade/frequency where present, on-readings, kun-readings and English meanings. Dictionary detail is derived upstream from KANJIDIC2 from the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group.
The derivative dataset is CC BY-SA 4.0, and V0.61 includes its attribution/provenance information rather than hiding the source behind a generic “AI-generated” label. The Hostinger runtime receives only the validated derived JavaScript bundle; raw source and release research remain Project-only development artifacts.