I’m not sure whether to pose this as a question or a bug report, but let’s ask first.
Is there any difference in the treatment of difficult words for Pro and non-Pro members? (I do not have Pro.) Am I correct that difficult words should return to short review periods until I start getting them right?
Because it currently seems that I have a lot of words marked as difficult (in both the web version and the Android app, although those two often differ) but scheduled for review in 80, 140 or even 170 days. And that doesn’t feel right.
Just because a word is on the difficult words list does not mean its review schedule is altered. If Memrise added an item automatically because you missed it, then yes, it will be reviewed more often (at first). If you added the word manually, the review schedule is not altered at all.
The list is there so that you can easily review words that you think you need more practice with (or Memrise does).
I don’t add difficult words manually - I don’t see the point, I am not a Pro member, so I don’t have access to the Difficult words function. I only use the number of difficult words as an indication of how well I’m doing in this or that course.
There might be several reasons why this is happening. One possible explanation is that the word’s schedule isn’t altered, but now I’m thinking that maybe it actually was altered sometime in the past and then the word was never unmarked. I’d have to watch them more closely to find out which is true, but someone else’s post suggests it might be the latter case: