I just spent several minutes on a starred words list of 11 words until I was able to get most of them pretty well. Will several consecutive 3's in a short period of time push these words back significantly in regular study, or will the SRS algorithm realize that such short intervals are only of limited value for long-term recall and continue to run those words by me regularly for a few more days? If it messes with SRS, the alternative is to keep them starred and run through the starred words list every day, dropping them out after significant time, though it seems like that could cause the problem of pushing the words back several months, when I would still prefer to have them coming weekly or so for a while after the initial burn-in...

The algorithm does take well into account how underdue or overdue the item is. Basically, if you study it when it's 50% ready, it then pushes it ahead half as much as it would have if you'd studied it on time, or if it's overdue at 200% then twice as much. So if you study the words in rapid succession, they will not pushed forward much at all after the first review (though each time you get it right, the time difference is pushed forward by at the very least around 10%).