YouKnowBall

Daily sports trivia for people who really know ball. Each league (NFL, NBA, MLB) has a Deep Cut prompt, a Golf course, a Career Path and a Box Score every day, the same for everyone. Correct answers nobody else thought of score the most.

Read the prompt, then lock in up to three players who fit it. Every correct answer scores; the fewer other players who name the same answer, the more it's worth. A wrong pick scores zero and tells you why it didn't count.

Points come from how many other players named the same answer, from 5 for the obvious pick to 100 for the rarest; your own pick never counts against you. Early in the day, when few people have played, each answer's fame (Wikipedia pageviews) stands in for the crowd: the prompt's most famous answer scores 5 and its least famous 100, so even the first player of the day gets a real spread, and can't score 100 with Tom Brady. Points move as people play and lock at midnight Eastern, when the Board reveals every answer.

Points depend on what other players said today. Rarity (0-100) depends only on fame: 85 means the answer is less famous than 85% of the prompt's valid answers. Rarity means something even on a quiet day.

Chalk (under 25 points) is the answer everyone blurts out. Role Player is 25-49, Starter 50-69 and Deep Cut 70 or more. The Sleeper is the day's gem answer. Too Clever is an answer that looks obscure but that lots of players reached for. A Miss isn't a valid answer.

One answer per prompt is the day's gem: obscure, but gettable. Find it and it lights up gold. Some are hand-picked; the rest are chosen from how famous each answer is.

Answers come straight from the stats, and each league's data has limits: NFL game stats start in 1999 (rosters go back to 1920 and drafts to 1980), NBA box scores are complete from 1955-56, and MLB stats come from Retrosheet, which publishes after each season ends. Prompts say when they start ("since 2010"). A wrong pick shows the stat that ruled it out. If you still think it should count, send it in with the Feedback button under "Answer check".

Every day at midnight Eastern, for every league at once. The countdown on your result card and the home page shows how long is left.

Every Thursday, each league's Deep Cut goes back before 2000: a team's roster in a decade, an old draft class, teammates of a star from another era. The rest of the week sticks to the modern game. Holidays get their own: Thanksgiving football, Christmas Day basketball and Fourth of July baseball.

They count how many of the prompt's answers are well known. Easy prompts have plenty of household names to fall back on; Hard ones have only a few, so getting anything right takes some digging.

Each day's course has three holes. A hole is a career leaderboard, like career rebounds, and a target rank, the pin. Name a player: every place their rank misses the pin by is a stroke. Ties share a rank, and a player with none of the stat ranks one past the last player. Lowest total wins.

Each day one player is shown only as the teams they played for, in order, with the years. Name them in six guesses. Every miss reveals a clue (position, draft or debut, a career stat line, college or background, then initials) and the teams your guess shares with them. Team names are as they were then: the Seattle SuperSonics, not the Thunder. Answers are well-known players who played for at least three franchises.

Each day shows one real stat line from a single game, like 32 of 48, 517 yards, 4 TD, and whether it was the regular season or the playoffs. Name the player in six guesses. Every miss reveals a clue (the season, the team, the opponent and result, the position, then initials) and whether your guess ever played for that team. The game is a well-known player's biggest one by what their position does.

Your streak counts the days in a row you've played a league's Deep Cut. It carries through today until midnight, so it doesn't drop to zero in the morning before you play. Replaying past days from the archive doesn't extend it.

Every 7 days in a row you play a league's Deep Cut earns a streak freeze for that league. Miss a day and a freeze is used automatically, so your streak survives (the missed day just doesn't add to it). You can hold 2 at a time, or 3 with YouKnowBall Pro. Your stats show how many you have and when the next one comes.

Badges for playing a league's Deep Cut on consecutive days, kept for good once earned: Rookie on your first day, Regular at 5 days in a row, All-Star at 14, MVP at 30 and Hall of Famer at 45. Your stats show how far you are from the next, and your best badge shows next to your name in friends leagues and on shared results.

Yes. Turn on daily reminders in Settings: one when the day's slate goes live, and one in the evening if a streak of 2+ days is about to end. They work in Chrome, Edge and Firefox, and on iPhone once YouKnowBall is on your home screen. Turn them off in Settings any time.

Yes. The archive lists every past prompt. Play one blind, then see the Board. Archive plays are scored against how everyone did that day, but they don't count toward the Board, your streak or your stats.

Start a league, pick a nickname and send your friends the invite link. Everyone in it sees each other's daily scores once they've finished that day's prompt, so nobody gets spoiled. No sign-up needed.

No. Your browser keeps an anonymous ID so your picks, streaks and leagues stick around. To keep them on every device, or get them back after clearing your browser, sign in with Google on the account page. Signing in on a new browser brings what you played there along; if you played the same day on both, your better card is kept.

Use the Feedback button in the corner of any page, or the prompt-idea box under your result. Messages come straight to the person who runs YouKnowBall.

No. It's an independent project built on public data. See Data & licenses at the bottom of this page for sources.