The short version
Every correct answer scores between 5 and 100 points. The fewer other players who named the same answer, the more it’s worth. Your own pick never counts against you: you’re scored on what everyone else said. Wrong answers score zero. Three picks a day, so a perfect day is 300.
The first player of the day
Scoring by what other people said has a problem early in the morning: if you’re the first to play, nobody else has said anything, so every answer would look unique. To fix that, each valid answer starts with an estimate of how often people will name it, based on how famous the player is (English Wikipedia pageviews, or career games for prompts whose players mostly predate Wikipedia) and how well they fit the prompt (four touchdown games count for more than one).
That estimate counts as fifty imaginary players spread across the answers. As real players arrive, their answers outweigh the estimate, and by the end of a busy day the score is almost entirely what people actually said. So the first player of the day still gets a real spread: the prompt’s most famous answer scores 5 and its least famous scores 100, and naming the biggest star never scores big.
From share to points
Points follow the share of players who named an answer on a logarithmic scale, so each halving of the share is worth the same number of extra points. The scale runs from the prompt’s most famous answer (5 points) to its least famous (100), so an easy prompt and a hard one both use the whole range.
Here’s a day with 100 correct answers on one prompt:
| Answer | Fame estimate | Named by | Share | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The superstar | 20% | 40 of 100 | 33% | 5 (Chalk) |
| A solid starter | 2% | 5 of 100 | 3.4% | 42 (Role Player) |
| A one-season backup | 0.2% | only you | 0.07% | 100 (Deep Cut) |
If you were the first player of the day, those same three answers would score 5, 53 and 100: the fame estimate alone puts them in the same order.
When points are final
Points move during the day as more people play. At midnight Eastern the day closes, the points lock, and the Board shows every valid answer with how many players named it, including the ones nobody thought of.
Tiers
- Chalk
- Under 25 points: the answer everyone blurts out.
- Role Player
- 25 to 49 points.
- Starter
- 50 to 69 points.
- Deep Cut
- 70 points or more: an answer few others found.
- The Sleeper
- The day’s gem: one obscure-but-gettable answer per prompt. Find it and it lights up gold.
- Too Clever
- An answer that looks obscure but that lots of players reached for, the deep cut everyone thinks only they know.
- Miss
- Not a valid answer. It scores zero, and the game shows the stat that ruled it out.
Points and rarity
Next to points, every answer shows a rarity from 0 to 100 that depends only on fame: 85 means the answer is less famous than 85% of the prompt’s valid answers. Rarity never changes during the day, so it means something even when only a few people have played.
Golf
Golf works the other way around. 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.
Ready? Play today’s games or read the FAQ.