FOON-ga WEH-ga
Think for yourself.A little, every day.
Funga Wega is a daily practice room for thinking, with sessions of about eight minutes that ask you to work something out and notice how you reached your answer. It is for students preparing for reasoning tests, adults who find themselves reaching for search before considering a problem and anyone curious about how memory works. The painting above gives that practice a place to begin, with a path of tiles leading towards a question mark.
This site is built as a memory palace using the method of loci, which connects ideas with places along an imagined route. Each room pairs an idea with a vivid object, so that retracing the route after your visit gives you something concrete to use when recalling what you learnt.
You will make your own attempts, choose how sure you feel and compare those judgements with the answers. Nothing in the practice is generated or graded by AI, and your progress stays on your own device by default. Follow the tiles into the palace with one small intention: to notice where an answer comes from before deciding how much to trust it.
Room 2 of 11 · The Study
A short session gives you several kinds of thinking to practise
Five objects sit on the desk: a pattern tile, a ruler, a magnifier, a ledger and a candle. The tile asks you to find a rule that explains the changes you can see, while the ruler stands for an estimate with a lower and an upper bound. Together they introduce a useful difference between questions whose answers you can work out from the information given and questions that require you to judge how much remains unknown.
The magnifier belongs to short arguments and reading questions, where a conclusion needs support from the words in front of you. The ledger holds numerical reasoning, such as a table, a chart or a base-rate problem, with the working shown after you answer. The candle marks a review of earlier misses, which brings unfinished learning back into the session.
A session also includes a working-memory task, in which you read a starting state and a sequence of changes, hide them and answer from memory, and a field note that supplies one short thinking move with a question that needs it. These activities share about eight minutes of practice, so you meet several kinds of difficulty and can observe which approach you reach for in each.
- A pattern tile stands for the puzzles, where six tiles sit in a row and you work out what changes and what only looks like it does.
- A ruler with a range stands for the estimates, where you give a low and a high that you are ninety percent sure hold the answer.
- A magnifier stands for the short arguments and passages, where you find the step that does not follow or the claim the text does not support.
- A ledger stands for the number work, where a table, a chart or a base rate out of ten thousand carries one question and the working is shown afterwards.
- A candle stands for the review, where something you missed earlier returns as a fresh variant on a spaced schedule.
Room 3 of 11 · The Dial Room
Your confidence becomes useful when you compare it with what happened
The brass dial runs from 20% to 95%, and you set it before locking in each answer, leaving a record of how sure you felt while the result was still unknown. Hindsight can blur the judgement you made. An argument that sounded convincing may have drawn its appeal from familiar wording or an attractive conclusion, even when you have not yet checked whether each step supports the next.
The Insights screen compares those judgements with your results across questions. If answers you regularly judge as very likely to be right are often wrong, or cautious answers keep turning out correctly, you have a reason to inspect the evidence you accept when choosing your confidence. Either pattern is worth examining over several attempts. One outcome alone cannot tell you how well your confidence fits your work.
For an estimate, give a range you are 90% sure contains the truth. Across many estimates, that means aiming to catch the answer about nine times out of ten, which Insights also helps you check. A narrow estimate of a building's age can look impressively precise even when you have little evidence to rule out a much older date. Before choosing your limits, consider what would have to be true for the answer to fall outside them.
70% If you are calibrated, saying this means being right about seven times in ten.
Over a month the practice room draws your own line against this one, so you can see whether you run hot or cold.
Room 4 of 11 · The Candle Hall
Five candles show when a missed answer will come back for review
Five candles stand along the hall, lit for reviews after 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 14 days and 30 days. A missed answer joins this queue and returns on those days, so you meet it again as the first encounter fades and its details grow harder to bring to mind. Each return is another attempt at retrieval, and a correct answer moves the item to the next candle. A further miss lights the first candle again. An item you cannot yet recall needs an early return before a longer gap can help.
The ladder is a practical choice, and research has not established it as a proven optimum for every learner or subject. A fact returns as the same question, which gives you another chance to recall the knowledge itself. A puzzle returns as a fresh puzzle of the same kind, because remembering yesterday's answer would tell you less about whether you can use the approach again with different details.
When an earlier miss reappears, pause before opening a hint and try to reconstruct the thought that led you astray. Perhaps you overlooked a condition in the question, or perhaps you read a comparison in the wrong direction. The return gives you a specific piece of work to attempt again, with enough distance in time to make the attempt informative.
- recall curve
- the chance you could still recall the item, schematic
- review
- a candle on the day a review happens
- today
- the day you have dragged to
This simulator is a schematic, drawn with round illustrative numbers rather than measured ones, to show the shape of the idea.
Room 5 of 11 · The Workshop
Three layers of hints and a choice of approaches help when you are stuck
A pegboard of tools fills the workshop wall, beside a lantern fitted with three lenses. Each lens stands for a layer of help when a question has stopped you: the first hint points towards something worth noticing, the second suggests an approach and the third works through a first step. You can use enough light to resume your own reasoning while leaving part of the problem for yourself to solve.
The tools represent different approaches because people can reach the same answer through different routes. In a pattern puzzle, you might compare neighbouring terms while someone else separates the odd positions from the even positions. Their usefulness depends on what the pattern contains. The app offers more than eighty strategies, grouped by kind of question and labelled with a style such as visual, verbal or systematic, so you can look for an approach that suits the work in front of you.
It tracks speed, accuracy and hints for each approach and shows which has worked well for you so far, along with how many attempts lie behind that comparison. That record is provisional because the next question may ask something different. When a familiar approach stalls, choose another tool and notice what it makes visible. Separating positions, for instance, can reveal a relationship that neighbouring terms conceal, giving you a concrete reason to change your approach.
One small puzzle, four ways in: the sequence 3, 6, 12, 24 and then a missing number.
Seen as bars, each bar is twice the height of the one before it, so the missing bar must be twice the height of 24, which is 48.
Said as a sentence, the rule is that each number is double the one before it. Read the sentence against every pair, 3 to 6, 6 to 12 and 12 to 24, and it holds each time, so the next number is 48.
| Term | Difference | Ratio |
|---|---|---|
| 3 to 6 | +3 | ×2 |
| 6 to 12 | +6 | ×2 |
| 12 to 24 | +12 | ×2 |
| 24 to ? | +24 | ×2 |
The differences change but the ratio is constant, so the pattern is multiplicative and the next term is 24 times 2, which is 48.
The numbers feel like doubling, so guess 48 at once. Then test the guess against the two pairs you did not use to make it: 3 to 6 and 12 to 24 both double, so the guess stands.
The three lenses give three layers of help with the same puzzle, and you choose how much light you want.
Look at how far apart the numbers are, and notice whether that distance stays the same or grows.
Try comparing each number with the one before it as a ratio rather than as a difference, and see whether the ratio repeats.
Dividing 6 by 3 gives 2, and dividing 12 by 6 gives 2 as well, so the rule is to multiply by 2 each time, and the last step is yours to finish.
Room 6 of 11 · The Atlas
Short factual lessons about the world give your thinking something to work on
A great wall map carries pins for the places and events you can read about in short factual lessons. Each pin stands for a different lesson. You read one lesson and then answer questions that check whether you followed what it said, rather than whether you can merely recognise a name. Recognising a date is easy enough, but explaining how one event led to another asks you to follow the account much more closely.
The lessons are neutral and sourced, and each one shows the month its account was current, so you can judge how far to trust a detail and where to check it. Their facts come back later through the same spaced review that returns your earlier misses. A later question asks you to retrieve something from a lesson you have since set aside, which turns what you read into recall practice and adds to what you know about the world.
Comprehension, recall and working memory each play a part in learning from a passage. You follow its meaning, hold the relevant details in mind while you reason, and try to remember them afterwards. After reading about a place or an event, describe one relationship in your own words, such as how a new form of transport changed a town. Then separate the explanation the lesson gave from any explanation you added yourself.
Choose a pin on the map
Seven places, each with one checkable fact
Each pin opens a short fact card, and after you have read it you can ask the card to test you on what it said, which is the same move the reading room uses.
Room 7 of 11 · The Library
Each field note pairs a thinking move with a label for how well it is supported
The library shelves hold spines grouped by theme, including working memory, the psychology of improvement and clearer thinking, alongside systems thinking, craft and thinking in the age of AI. A field note takes one short thinking move from these subjects and pairs it with a question that needs the move, so you can try the advice while its purpose is still clear.
Every note carries an evidence label: research-backed, mixed evidence or practitioner wisdom. A research-backed label means studies support the idea, mixed evidence means the findings disagree or the size of the effect is disputed, and practitioner wisdom means the advice comes from experience and judgement rather than experiments. That difference matters when you decide how much weight to give a suggestion, and none of the labels promises help with every problem.
Suppose a note asks you to make an assumption visible before using it in a calculation. You can write down what you have assumed, then consider how the answer would change if that assumption were wrong. A note from systems thinking might instead draw your attention to a delay between an action and its consequence. As you move along the shelves, give each suggestion a specific task and notice where it helps you reason or leaves something unresolved.
- research-backed
- replicated, or a good review agrees
- mixed evidence
- real findings whose size is disputed
- practitioner wisdom
- useful in practice, not measured
Shelf one holds working memory, thinking in the age of AI and the psychology of improvement.
Miller's seven was a rhetorical number, and Cowan's later estimate is about four chunks at once, so write the state down and hold fewer things.
research-backedMiller 1956, Cowan 2001
Sweller's point is that the load a task puts on you is partly how it is presented, which means you can split it, sketch it and label it.
research-backedSweller 1988
Trying to recall or work something out before you see the answer is what makes it stick, and an answer handed over too early skips the part that teaches you.
research-backedRoediger and Karpicke 2006
Offloading memory and reasoning to devices is convenient and sometimes wise, while whether it dulls the skill you offloaded is still being worked out, so choose it on purpose.
mixed evidenceRisko and Gilbert 2016
Spacing, mixing topics and testing yourself feel worse than rereading and work better, and the practice room is built on that trade.
research-backedBjork 1994, Dunlosky and colleagues 2013
Ericsson showed that focused, corrected practice matters, and later reviews found it explains less of expertise than first claimed, so both findings are worth holding.
mixed evidenceEricsson 1993, Macnamara 2014
People who state how sure they are, and then see how often they were right, become better judges of what they know, which is the whole point of the brass dial.
research-backedLichtenstein and Fischhoff 1980
Shelf two holds clearer thinking, systems thinking and craft.
Instead of asking how to succeed, ask what would guarantee failure and then avoid that, because it is often the shorter list.
practitioner wisdomJacobi, by way of Munger
Before estimating from the details, ask what happened to the last twenty cases like it, because the base rate is dull and usually right.
research-backedKahneman and Tversky 1979
The rule applies to fences, to rules and to steps in an argument that look pointless until you learn what they were guarding against.
practitioner wisdomChesterton 1929
Meadows argued that a system's behaviour comes from its structure, so when the same problem keeps coming back, a feedback loop is holding it there.
practitioner wisdomMeadows, Thinking in Systems
This is why there is no single score in the practice room and no brain age, and why accuracy, speed, hints and fresh-variant success are kept apart.
practitioner wisdomGoodhart 1975, Strathern 1997
Brooks's law says coordination grows faster than headcount, so before adding a resource, ask what it costs to connect it to everything else.
practitioner wisdomBrooks, The Mythical Man-Month
Feathers's rule for old code works for old beliefs too: pin down what it does now, then change one thing, and name things for what they are.
practitioner wisdomFeathers 2004, Martin 2008
Pull a spine from either shelf and its note will open here on the reading desk.
Room 8 of 11 · The Gallery
Mistakes you keep making get a name, a fix and a short round of practice
In the Museum of Almost Right each glass case holds one trap, which is a wrong turn that looks reasonable while you are taking it. Treating a percentage rise and a percentage fall as though they share a starting amount is one, because the first change has already moved the amount. A single slip tells you little about how you work, but the same trap turning up on several days points at something specific. Traps are named after the mistake and never after the person who made it.
Consider an answer that brings a familiar fact into a reading passage, even though the passage supplies no evidence for it. Truth outside a passage does not establish evidence inside it. Naming that trap helps you recognise the moment when outside knowledge takes over from what you have read, so the repair can be as concrete as pointing to the relevant sentence.
When misses recur, the app gives the trap a name and offers a fix together with a short practice round aimed at that difficulty. In your next attempt, try the suggested move before committing to an answer, then use the result to judge whether it helped in that case.
The Moving Baseline
The case turns over to show how this trap works and how to step around it.
The Moving Baseline
The trap. Up twenty percent and then down twenty percent does not bring you back to where you started, because the second step uses a different starting point.
The fix. Name the baseline before you touch the number, and say which amount each percentage is a share of.
The Wrong Whole
The case turns over to show how this trap works and how to step around it.
The Wrong Whole
The trap. A percentage of the subtotal is not a percentage of the total, so the share was right while the whole was wrong.
The fix. Ask what the share is a share of, exactly, and write that whole down before you divide.
The Single Thread
The case turns over to show how this trap works and how to step around it.
The Single Thread
The trap. Two things were changing in the pattern, and you followed one of them, which fitted five tiles and then broke on the sixth.
The fix. Separate the features, then test each one on the tile you did not use to build your rule.
The Uninvited Fact
The case turns over to show how this trap works and how to step around it.
The Uninvited Fact
The trap. Your answer used something you knew about the world that the passage never said, so it was true outside and unsupported inside.
The fix. Point to the line that backs the claim, or treat the claim as not given by the passage.
The Missing Crowd
The case turns over to show how this trap works and how to step around it.
The Missing Crowd
The trap. A test that is ninety-five percent accurate for a condition that one person in a thousand has still produces mostly false positives, because the crowd was left out of the sum.
The fix. Start from how many people there are out of ten thousand, and count both groups before you compare them.
The Stale Fact
The case turns over to show how this trap works and how to step around it.
The Stale Fact
The trap. You remembered the figure well, and it was true when you learned it, but the world moved and the number did not come with you.
The fix. Ask when you learned it, and whether it is the kind of thing that changes, before you rely on it.
Room 9 of 11 · The Scales
Practice improves the skill you practise and sits beside sleep and exercise
The balance weighs practice against the other things that shape how well you think. Working on a particular kind of question with feedback can improve how you handle that kind of question, although the evidence for wider transfer remains limited and contested. Fluency in a task does not establish greater intelligence. The honest promise is a chance to practise specific moves and examine how you use them.
Sleep and exercise sit in the heavier pan because their value extends beyond performance in a practice room. Sleep loss can disrupt attention and memory, making it harder to work with information that you would otherwise manage. Regular physical activity supports physical and mental health. This is a choice about priorities, rather than a measured claim that a walk produces a particular gain on a reasoning test.
Give the small session a place that fits around those priorities, and take its results as information about the work you attempted. If you want to use a method outside the room, try it on the real task that matters to you and check whether it helps there.
Each weight can go on the left pan, the right pan or back on the table. Their sizes are a judgement, not a measurement.
Room 10 of 11 · The Courtyard
The courtyard lets you try a pattern puzzle and a range estimate
The paved courtyard holds a small experiment, with a puzzle on one side and an estimate on the other. In the puzzle, compare the features of the tiles one at a time, such as the dot's position and the number of stripes. Choose the tile that continues the changes you have found, and set how sure you are before you check, since a good rule must account for every tile.
The estimate asks for a range instead of a single precise answer: a low and a high figure for the number of bones in an adult human body, wide enough that you are 90% sure the truth falls inside. You are choosing how much uncertainty to admit. Across many such estimates, ranges at that confidence should contain the truth about nine times in ten, although one attempt cannot show whether your judgement is well calibrated.
When the answers appear, compare them with what you expected and give the explanation time to settle. For the pattern, identify which feature supported your rule or exposed its weakness, and for the estimate, notice whether the range reflected what you knew. Try again if you want to test a different approach, keeping the first attempt in mind as a point of comparison.
Room 11 of 11 · The Exit
The floor plan helps you recall the rooms before you leave
The floor plan offers one more task before you leave: place each remembered object or idea in its room. Try to bring the room to mind before looking back at its copy, using the shape of the route and the objects along it as clues. This is retrieval practice, because you are attempting to produce a memory while the explanation is out of sight. The plan provides a place to put what you remember.
A room that looked familiar as you passed through it may be harder to find when you have only its object as a clue. Attempting recall makes those gaps more visible. If an answer surprises you, revisit the room and connect its idea to the object more deliberately, picturing yourself turning towards it and doing the small thinking move it represents before trying to place it again without rereading.
Open the practice room when you can set aside about eight minutes for a session. Before locking in the first answer, choose a confidence level that reflects the evidence you have, allowing for the possibility that an appealing answer can still rest on a rule you have not checked. The explanation afterwards gives you something concrete to compare with that judgement, while a missed item can return later for another attempt.
Question 1 of 5
Choose the room where you remember meeting each object or idea.
The questions will appear here once the plan has loaded.