Auxiliary Shapes

Learn different variations of radicals

Once you know the basic radicals, the next step is telling the auxiliary shapes apart. The same radical changes form inside different characters: squashed, rotated, or swapped for a related shape (the 水 key, for example, also covers 氵 and 氺). This stage works through each radical's auxiliary shapes key by key, then drills you on shapes that look alike but belong to different keys, so you can spot the radical in any character and take the right code.