Trivia questions

A trivia question is content and layout at once. The answer has to lie on a 5×5 board as a path of neighbouring tiles, and the clue sets the height of the question card for a whole run. So the writing rules below come from how the question behaves on screen.

Questions

497

Easy

158

Intermediate

172

Difficult

167

Shared

96

Daily only

200

Rooms only

201

Counted from the bank on every build. The bank is generated from app.jsx, so these numbers are the shipping game's. This site never shows an answer or a full question from it.

#Where questions come from

Questions come only from Ru's own lists; none are AI-written. The first 96 (3.22) went through a weeding pass that removed number answers, answers too long for the board, phrases, and anything confusing, disputed, dated or grown-up. A kid-safety pass then cut an alcohol clue, a plague clue and a religion question. 101 more joined in 3.23.2 (one duplicate skipped) and 300 in 3.23.3, all checked against the bank so no answer repeats.

#The answer

The requirements put it in one line: "Every rule comes from how the answer has to work on that board."

• One word, 4 to 10 letters. 3 letters are too easy to find by accident; over 10 gets cramped on a 5×5 board.
• Letters A to Z only: no numbers, spaces, hyphens, apostrophes or accents.
• One clear, unambiguous answer. For a person, say which name: "Give his surname."
• Not a number question, even when the number could be spelled out.
• No answer already in the bank. New questions are checked against answers-used.txt.

On the board, the answer goes down first as a path that never reuses a tile, then decoys fill the rest. About half the decoys reuse the answer's own letters, so the path doesn't jump out.

#The clue

• 80 characters or fewer, and 15 words or fewer.
• Plain and direct. No trick wording, no "which of these", no multiple choice.
• Fill-the-blank clues (___) are fine.
• Facts accurate and current, with a source for anything that isn't common knowledge.

The cap is new in 3.23.6. Until then the rule was "15 words, so they fit on two lines". Measured, that wasn't true: 15 words can run to 96 characters, which is 4 lines on a phone.

#Who it's for

• All ages, kid-safe. No violence, crime, drugs, alcohol, sex, or anything scary or gross.
• A wide mix. Geography, science, space, food, animals, history, art, music (pop and rap), movies and TV, sports, language and wordplay, inventions, travel and airports. No single category dominates.

#Levels

The game shows the level above every question ("Question 6 · Difficult").

Writers' lists call the top level "Hard"; the game shows "Difficult".

#Pools

A new question goes into one pool, never both, and no question repeats across pools.

#How a run deals questions

#Order in a run

Every run is a list of 60 questions dealt up front. Mixed, which the daily run always uses, climbs: questions 1 and 2 are Easy, 3 to 5 Intermediate, then Difficult, with every third question Intermediate (8, 11, 14…). In Play, the Easy, Intermediate and Difficult toggles deal only that level.

#Daily: a walk through the whole bank

The daily run is the same for everyone, so it can't use a player's history. Instead each level walks a fixed shuffle of the daily pool, and the starting point moves forward every day by what a strong run uses: 2 Easy, 6 Intermediate, 8 Difficult. A question comes back only after its level has gone all the way round, and new questions join the rotation on their own.

#Trivia mode: unseen first

Each phone counts how many times it has met every question (ow_tq_counts). A question counts once whether it was solved, skipped, or on screen when time ran out. A new round deals unseen questions first, then the least-seen. A question met 3 times waits at the back until fewer than 8 in its level are still under the cap; then that level starts over.

In a room, the host deals from their own counts and the list rides on the room (tseq), so everyone still gets the same questions in the same order.

#How it got here

#Known issues and gaps

• 20 clues run over 80 characters (9 daily, 11 room). 10 of them take 4 lines at 390 wide and set the card's height in most runs. They're listed in the 3.23.6 audit; shortening them keeps the answers. The count is tracked as "Long clues" in System health, so it can't grow.
• Two answers are 3 letters long (one room Easy, one daily Difficult), under the 4-letter minimum. Found while writing this page, by checking the bank against the rules above.
• "Today and tomorrow never overlap" holds for runs of up to 16 questions. The daily walk steps forward 6 Intermediate and 8 Difficult a day. A run that meets a 17th question (solved or skipped) reaches the Intermediate that opens tomorrow's run at question 3. Found while writing this page, from the rotation code.
• Levels are the writer's judgement against the three definitions above. The sources record no solve rates per level to check them against.
• The requirements (3.23.3) ask for about 30 more Daily Difficult, 10 Daily Intermediate and 15 Game room Easy questions, to keep a strong daily player at about 3 sightings of any question a month.

#Related

• Trivia: the run the questions are dealt into
• D-004, the question card: why clue length matters
• D-008, the unlimited trivia run: why a day uses many questions, not one
• Voice and copy: the rest of the game's words
• System health: the long-clue count