Mandarin Supermarket: Ring It Up

How to play: this is a language game wearing a supermarket. You are not running the floor — the shop runs itself: the cashier works the one till on her own, fetches crates, fills the stands, mops the spills, sees the applicants in and chases the shoplifters, all without being told. What you do is read Chinese and answer two questions.

Take as long as you like. There is no time limit and nothing to beat the clock to: a level is 10 questions, and it ends the moment you answer the last one. One question is up at a time, and while it is up the whole shop stands still — nobody walks in, no queue drains and nothing moves — so you can read it as slowly as you need. How long the level took is recorded on the end-of-shift card, and your fastest run at each level is kept.

1 — Which aisle? A shopper comes in through the sliding doors and asks for something: 请问，苹果在哪儿？ — “excuse me, where are the apples?” Pick the aisle it is shelved in from the row along the bottom. There are three, and their signs hang over the islands in the middle of the shop: 水果 fruit, 蔬菜 vegetables and 面包 bakery. Twelve things are on the shelves, four to an aisle. Send them to the wrong aisle and they are not turned away — they walk over, fail to find it, say so and trudge on to the right one.

2 — How much? Watch the till while their basket is rung through: every line is said over it — 苹果两斤，十二块。 — with the running total in digits on the readout and the till's own screen. When the basket is scanned they ask 一共多少钱？ and the row offers four prices; the figure you just watched build up is the answer. Nothing moves until you have answered — and a wrong figure is refused: the shopper waits, the chip is struck off, and she says what it actually rang up at — 一共二十块，不是二十一块。 — until you say the till's own number. Nobody leaves charged a figure nobody said. ⚠ The wrong answers are not random: they are the mistakes worth making once. 十二 is twelve and 二十 is twenty — the same two characters the other way round.

A shopper who was pointed at the right aisle and charged the right price leaves a tip — up to half the basket again — and adds to your streak, which pays a bonus on every basket after it. Either mistake costs both. Goods are counted properly, which is the other half of the lesson: 斤 (half a kilo) for produce, and 个, 棵, 袋 and 盒 for the rest — 我要两斤苹果. One phrase in four leaves the measure word out, so it cannot be found by position.

The Level row is where on the Supermarket lesson tonight's shift sits — the same levels the course wall is divided into, numbered the same way. The Difficulty row is how much of each line is written: Beginner writes the pinyin and the English under every line, Intermediate the pinyin alone, and Advanced the characters with nothing under them. A level's shift is played on the floor the lesson level has reached: level 1 opens the door at half speed, and from level 3 a shopper's request fades a few seconds after they say it — tap them to hear it again, free but for the time, which is the one tap left on the floor. Levels 4 and 5 shorten that fade further, and past the sim's own fifth tier the floor holds at its fullest: the stands running down, the spills and the shoplifters, the applicants knocking at the office, the security guard on the exit and a washroom that makes every queue grumpier while it needs cleaning — while the lesson keeps going and the reading keeps being asked at the level you have reached.

You cannot lose a level. Nothing is timed and nobody gives up waiting, so nothing ends the shift except answering its last question. What varies is your time and how many you got right, and finishing walks the course on — the match board at this level, then the next level's listen, class, applied game and match.