Hanzi Crush

Four tiers, 8,105 characters, and one rule: two hanzi that share a Mandarin reading make a pair.

Hanzi Crush is a matching game built on a single rule: two characters that share a Mandarin reading make a pair.

Tap 明 and 名 — both míng — and they clear. That one mechanic happens to be the exact thing that makes spoken Chinese hard: thousands of characters, a few hundred syllables, homophones everywhere. Playing the game is practising the distinction.

FOUR TIERS • Beginner — the 500 most common characters on a 2×2 board, five lives, no clock. Tiles speak their reading when you tap them. • Intermediate — 1,000 characters, and near-homophones start appearing beside the real pair. • Hard — 3,500 characters, 3×3 board, 90 seconds on the clock. • Pro — all 8,105 characters, same clock, and no character repeats within a run.

Each tier unlocks by clearing the one before it.

POLYPHONIC CHARACTERS Characters with more than one reading are in play, and every match names the reading it resolved on. Clear 行 against 航 and the app tells you it matched on háng — the reading you did not know — instead of letting you assume xíng.

A DICTIONARY THAT ANSWERS BACK All 8,105 characters, searchable by character, by pinyin, or by English meaning. Readings, senses, and example sentences for each. Save any character to your notebook, and tap the speaker to hear it.

WHAT IT KEEPS TRACK OF Your best run on each tier, how many distinct characters you have matched, and a "needs review" list ranked by what you have missed most recently and most often. Every run ends with a grid showing what you matched, what you missed, and what you never tried.

Works entirely offline. No account, no ads, no data collection. Interface in English and 简体中文.

Character data comes from the Unicode Consortium's Unihan Database. Example sentences come from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR).