Daily general knowledge quiz: method

What it measures

What it is: a short quiz of factual knowledge on mixed topics. What it isn't: a normed measure of crystallized intelligence or of memory; the questions have no measured difficulty.

Procedure

Each UTC day has a set of 10 questions from a fixed schedule (day 1 = 4 November 2026); the schedule covers 66 days and then starts again. The bank has 665 original questions in 18 topics (for example physics, capitals, chemistry, art, history, animals). Each day's set follows author-assigned difficulty levels 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3. Each question has 4 options in an order shuffled per day and question. The player taps an answer or presses 1 to 4; each question has 20 s. Answers are revealed only after the last question, with a short fact. Yesterday's set can still be finished after midnight UTC. A replay of a day already played in the browser is marked as a replay.

Parameters

Scoring

Primary metric: number of right answers out of 10; an unanswered or late answer counts as wrong. Also reported: total answer time and a right/wrong mark per question. 'Today's players' shows the day's average and the percentage of players with a lower score (ties count half), once at least 20 players have played that day in the same language; replays are not counted.

Valid-run rules

Answers must match the day's questions in order, and only today's or yesterday's set (UTC) can be scored. Answers after 21.5 s count as wrong. Replays are stored but excluded from today's players. Every scored run is stored with its input device class (touch, mouse, keyboard), page language, scorer version and runner-config hash. Quality flags (for example many runs from one connection within an hour, a missing visitor id, an automated browser, impossibly fast answers) and earlier attempts by the same visitor, account or connection are recorded with the row. Such runs are kept, but they are left out of any comparison with other players. Flags never change the player's own result.

Differences from the classic task

Research general-knowledge item sets are normed on how many people answer each item correctly. Our questions are our own, each checked against a reference source, with difficulty levels set by the authors, not measured.

Limitations

Ten questions a day is a small sample; topics vary by day. Background, schooling and interests strongly shape the score. Reading speed matters because of the clock. Translations can change how hard a question is. Answers could be looked up. No clinical use.

Languages and review status

English questions, plus full translations of the 665-question bank (same question IDs and answers) in 32 languages: Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Czech, Dutch, Filipino, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Marathi, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu and Vietnamese. Translation process: machine-assisted translation with automated script and spelling checks. The quiz page is offered only in these languages.