Maybe I have misunderstood Anki et al., but I thought such systems presented you with a word and politely asked you what it meant? Or in a more brutal version: presented you with a word in your own language to which you had to produce the equivalent in your target language?
Anyway: I still have the dictionary open when I choose my words for the first column (in blocks of 5 to 7 words - exceptions allowed) so I actually don't have to come up with the answer to a question at that stage. OK, when I cover the first column I
do have to come up with a solution to a problem, but I saw the solution in the dictionary just minutes ago - piece of cake! And when I then cover column 1 I once again have to answer a question, but the answer is the word I wrote in column 1 just moments before I covered it up. So if my word list systems is some kind of quiz, it's the easiest quiz in the world.
As I wrote above, I prefer looking at long lists of facts instead of being asked to produce them on command, and so far I think the method has worked pretty well for me. If I want to be presented with unexpected lexical challenges I just have to open a book or read a Wikipedia article.
But you
HAVE to cover the columns part of the time !!