Cloze deletion flashcards: when to use them and how to write good ones
A cloze deletion card blanks out part of a sentence and asks you to fill it back in, instead of splitting a fact into a separate question and answer. Used well, it's the fastest way to turn a paragraph of notes into flashcards. Used badly, it turns into a grammar quiz.
Build a deck in FlashcardsWhat a cloze deletion actually is
Take a sentence you already have — from a textbook, a lecture, your own notes — and hide one piece of it:
The mitochondria is the [...] of the cell.
The front of the card shows the sentence with a blank where the hidden text was. The back reveals the same sentence with the blank filled in. One source sentence can hide more than one piece of it, and each hidden piece becomes its own card: hide "mitochondria" in one card and "powerhouse" in another, and studying either one shows the other blank already filled in, so you're only ever tested on one fact at a time even though both live in the same note.
That's the core trade cloze deletion makes: you write one note instead of several question/answer pairs, and the surrounding sentence supplies context for free.
Cloze vs. basic: when each one wins
A basic card (front: question, back: answer) and a cloze card (front: sentence with a gap, back: sentence filled in) end up testing recall in slightly different ways. Neither is strictly better — they suit different material.
| Use cloze deletion for | Use a basic card for |
|---|---|
| A fact embedded in a sentence you'd otherwise have to invent a question for ("The treaty was signed in [...]") | A clean pair with no natural sentence — a word and its translation, a country and its capital |
| A definition where the term itself is the thing to recall ("A [...] is a triangle with two equal sides") | A question that has more than one correct phrasing, where a fixed sentence would be misleading |
| A list or sequence, one item hidden per card, drawn from the same source line | Anything you want to answer in reverse too — R3CK0N's "reversed" card kind makes the back a question automatically, which cloze can't do |
| Formulas and named values inside a longer explanation | A single, short fact with no useful surrounding sentence to lean on |
How R3CK0N studies a cloze card
A cloze card in R3CK0N is scheduled exactly like any other card — the same FSRS-6 memory model, the same Again / Hard / Good / Easy buttons, the same place in your review queue. What's different is only the front and back:
- The blank you're being tested on shows as
[...](or[a short hint]if the note included one). - Any other blanks from the same note are shown already filled in, in a slightly muted style, so you get their context without being tested on them again on this card.
- The back reveals the whole sentence with every blank filled in.
If you already keep cloze notes in Anki, importing a deck (.apkg) brings every cloze note across with its deletions intact — each numbered blank still becomes its own card, scheduled independently, with its own review history if you chose to keep it. See the guide to running an Anki deck in the browser for the full import walkthrough.
Rules for writing a cloze that tests memory, not grammar
1. One fact per blank
Hiding two unrelated ideas in one blank ("The [...] discovered [...] in 1928" as a single deletion) forces you to guess a whole clause instead of recalling one thing. Split it into two numbered blanks, or two separate notes.
2. Don't let the sentence give away the answer
"A square has [...] sides" only has one sane answer whether or not you remember anything — the grammar and common sense do the work, not your memory. Reword so the blank is genuinely the hard part: "A shape with four equal sides and four right angles is called a [...]".
3. Keep enough context to recall, not so much that it's a giveaway
A blank at the very end of a short, distinctive sentence is often too easy to guess from word count and phrasing alone. A blank in the middle of a longer sentence, with real content on both sides, forces an actual retrieval.
4. Watch the grammar across the blank
"He was born in [...]" leaks that the answer is a place or date via "in"; if you're testing a date, "He was born [...]" reads more naturally either way. Small wording choices like this are the difference between testing recall and testing pattern-matching.
5. Split long passages into several notes
A paragraph with six blanks in one note becomes one long card that's awkward to grade — you either got all six or you're marking a partial pass by feel. Several shorter notes, one or two blanks each, grade more honestly and schedule each fact on its own curve.
A worked example
| Weak cloze | Stronger version |
|---|---|
| "World War II ended in [...]." — one obvious blank, easy to guess as "a year" | "The Pacific theatre of World War II ended with Japan's surrender in [...]." — specific enough that only the fact answers it |
| "A [...] is a number that is only divisible by 1 and itself." — fine, but tests the term with the whole definition as a crutch | Split it: one card clozes the term from the definition; a second, separate basic card asks "Is 1 a prime number?" to catch the edge case the definition doesn't test |
Frequently asked questions
Can I make cloze cards inside R3CK0N itself?
Hand-made cards in the deck editor are currently basic front/back cards. Cloze notes arrive by importing an Anki deck that already uses Anki's cloze note type — R3CK0N reproduces the blanks, the numbering and the scheduling exactly.
Does one cloze note count as one card or several?
Several, if it has several numbered blanks. A note with three deletions becomes three cards, each due and reviewed on its own schedule — reviewing one doesn't affect when the others come up.
Is cloze deletion harder than a basic card?
Not inherently — it tests the same fact, with more context. A well-written cloze can be easier to recall than a bare question, because the surrounding sentence is a genuine memory cue rather than noise.
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