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Subject: How do other players answer so quickly?

Posted by: Terry
Date: Jun 30 10

I often receive this question, and thought that with the start of the new Global Challenge that it would be a a good time to discuss this.

The question, in some such form, is:

"How on earth do people answer 15 questions in 20-30 seconds? They've GOT to be cheating!"

We see fast times like these most frequently in the easy game, some smartest game categories, and the early divisions of the global challenge. Occasionally you see fast times in other games, although it tends to be rarer. It is no secret that a small number of FunTrivia players are incredibly fast.

It's a good question, because those times do look fast, and perhaps even suspicious, don't they? That's an average of less than 2 seconds or so per question. Clearly it's difficult to imagine reading all of the text of each question, reading each answer, thinking, clicking, and then scrolling to the next question in 2 seconds.

It is all, however, occurring completely legitimately. For starters, every single FunTrivia tournament (daily/hourly/GC game) has built in cheat protection. Very rarely will you actually receive identical questions to someone else. Yes, there is often overlap and the difficulty levels are the same to keep a fair playing field, but our algorithms are pretty effective at stopping intentional cheating. We also have other methods for detecting cheaters, multiple-computer users, multiple-account players, etc.

The secret of scoring fast is twofold: small question pools, and repetition.

A lot of our "very easy" question pools are fairly thin. There aren't a ton of questions in these pools because there are only so many "very easy" questions that one can ask about "religion", for example. Our difficult categories tend to have many times more questions.

Next comes repetition. FunTrivia has been running for over 10 years, and it's not a stretch to say that a good number of our active players playing today have been here for 5+ years. Many of our top players have been playing 8 years or more. Almost every day. Multiple times a day. Multiple games per session. We're talking about millions of trivia questions viewed per player.

Some of our top players have literally seen each of our "very easy" questions hundreds or in some cases likely closer to a thousand times.

Add these two together, and our faster players don't even need to really read the easier questions. They just know the answer by identifying a keyword or two in the question or answer. The amazing thing is that some players can do this even in some of the larger question pools, where there are thousands of questions. I'm sure some likely have photographic memory too, allowing them to memorize some of our deeper question pools.

As for scrolling tactics, some players use their keyboards (tab, etc), others use their middle mouse button to scroll. Some people hit page down.

It's precisely because of the group of super-fast players that we added the "division" system within most hourly and daily games a while ago, to give newer players a chance to challenge themselves against players of similar experience level on the site. I actually added this after playing some games myself and getting irritated at the fast scores! As a newbie player myself, I wanted a fairer comparison of my scores. The division/level system allows fast players to put their legitimately earned skills to test, while also allowing us mere mortals to play against one another by reading and thinking.

As such, don't be disappointed when you see other players score insanely quickly. Perhaps if you play a few thousand games you too could one day have a chance against them! Even then, maybe not. Some of us just are never going to be fast. I constructed a set of games specifically for us (monster quiz, 195 day bus ride, scavenger hunts, treasure hunt, mind melt casual mode, etc). FunTrivia really does have something for everyone.

If you're the type that likes to compare yourself to other players, save yourself some heartache and compare yourself to those in your experience/level range where the comparisons at least are somewhat fair.

Happy trivia!
Terry