Practicing building kanji will help them to stick in your mind. It's hard, but it's an effective way to learn, and it can be very addictive!

You can play Kanji Builder with random kanji at any level, or with a subset based on kanji usefulness.

You can play in two different modes: study mode, and high score mode. In study mode, after you build a kanji, you can practice drawing it, and you'll also see links to study the components you were shown to choose from. (Learning the components and their names is an important shortcut to learning kanji faster.) In high score mode, you have five lives, and your goal is to build as many kanji as you can. You lose lives by guessing incorrectly or by using help. It's very challenging!

Once you have correctly dragged all the components to the grid, the display will change to show you the normal handwritten version of the kanji, as well as the 'cascading kanji' view showing you the readings and meanings of the kanji and all its components in one place.

The grid shows you roughly where the components should be placed in relation to each other. In general, just drag components to the right squares - most kanji are formed of simple combinations of two or three elements next to or above each other.

For example, the very common kanji 見 (to see) is composed of two simpler components, 目 (eye), and 儿 (legs). This gives rise to Kanshudo's mnemonic - 'an eye on legs can see'.

To build 見, you would see a grid like this, with two boxes. You would need to identify the right two components (目 and 儿) in the supplied list. Then drag 'eye' to the top rectangle, and legs to the bottom. For practice, try to build 見 yourself now.

In some cases, components overlap. In these situations, when you drag a component over the grid, the box that needs multiple components will be shaded a darker color. For example, let's try 発 (emission). This is composed of three components, 癶 (hairy legs), 二 (two) and 儿 (legs). However, 二 and 儿 need to be placed on top of each other. So in this case, when you drag a component over the lower box, it will be shaded a darker color. Try to build 発 yourself now.

Some kanji use elements that surround other elements. In these kanji, the square which contains the surrounding element will light up when you drag a component over it, but you can only drop the kanji on the actual surrounding element.

For example, consider 道 (road), which is composed of ⻌ (move) and 首 (neck). When you drag a component over the L shaped box, the whole grid lights up. However, you can only drop ⻌ on the actual L shaped part, not the smaller box. Try to build 道 yourself now.

Since most kanji components are themselves kanji that can be broken down further, it would theoretically be possible to describe a complex kanji as a collection of many components. However, we don't think this is helpful. When deciding which components to highlight, we use the largest components that themselves have a meaning. As an example, consider 途 (another kanji meaning road). The top right element 余 could be described as a combination of 𠆢 (man), 于 (from), and ハ (eight). However, since it is a kanji in its own right, meaning 'surplus', we present 途 as the combination of just 余 and ⻌. Try to build 途 yourself now.