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Frequently Asked Questions

Question Quest


What is Question Quest?
    1. It's a way for you to share your interesting knowledge with the world and help us continue to introduce new questions to our games on a daily basis.

    2. It's a game of its own. Can you create questions that entertain other players? Can you create questions that people will like? Are you able to write better questions than other players? It's a challenge of its own!

    3. It's a way to help us to help varied, mixed quizzes for players to play throughout the day.

    4. It's a way to earn points (50 per question that gets accepted) and makes you eligible to complete some challenges and win badges.

What happens when I submit a question?
    1. You submit a question, making sure that your spelling and grammar are accurate, that your question is interesting, and your answer is correct.

    2. It goes into a queue and our editors briefly look over it to make sure that it is presentable and sufficiently interesting enough for our audience.

    3. Once the editor OKs it, it enters the queue for the New Question game. It may have to wait a couple of weeks depending on the number of new questions in the queue.

    4. It appears in the New Question game, where players play it. Players vote on whether they find it interesting or not, and we determine its difficulty based on how players scored on it.

    5. Questions are then used in our hourly games based on that data. So, easy questions appear in our easy game, impossible questions appear in our "Obscurity" game, etc.

    Feel free to submit as many questions as you like, but only 10 for editor approval at a time!

    Thanks for your participation. It's fantastic to see so much enthusiasm for this challenge, and many of the questions submitted have been really interesting.

What question submissions are accepted?
    Questions are accepted if they are well formed and at least somewhat interesting.

    A question is well formed if it:

      1. Uses correct spelling and grammar. U.S. English or British English are acceptable -- just be consistent.

      2. Contains 1 to 3 sentences of interesting information. This information should be related to the question/answer and add some new interesting information.

      3. Question is concise, yet provides all information required to answer it.

      4. Answer and interesting information is accurate and will remain accurate in the future (see the discussion on "Time Dependency" in the Quiz Author Section). The answer to "Who is the President of the USA?" will not be accurate a few years from now.

      5. The question is new, and has not been asked by another player in the past.

    A question is at least somewhat interesting if it:

      Fascinates, teaches, surprises, brings back memories, or entertains. An interesting question makes a player say "Wow, I didn't know that!", or "Yes, I know the answer to that!", or "I should know that. I learned it in school years ago!"

      An uninteresting question makes players (and our editors!) say "so what?" or "who cares?" or "why waste my time asking me this?".

      Whether a question is somewhat interesting or not is a subjective call on the part of our editors. When you form a question ask yourself the following:

      "If I asked this question of 10 random people around the world, would they think that it's at all interesting, or would they start to yawn?"

    Examples of somewhat interesting questions:

    • What brand of chocolates was named after a legendary naked lady who rode on a horse?
    • Most of us have heard that Henry the VIII had six wives. How many did he actually have put to death?
    • All stars are classified by their component elements and density. What kind of star is our Sun?
    • In the development of the Compact Disc, the goal of a 74 minute capacity was intended to be enough to fit the entirety of what composition by Beethoven?
    • What is the name of the island chain that stretches across the top of the Pacific Ocean from southwestern Alaska to Russia?
    • Which of these wonders of the ancient world did European Crusaders disassemble?
    • Which country did Sukarno help lead to independence in 1945, becoming its first President?
    • Chocolate is one of the world's most beloved flavors. Can you guess which country produces almost half of the world supply of cocoa?

    Examples of mostly uninteresting questions:

    • In "Auf Wiedersehen Pet", what is Oz's first name?
    • Who won the second series of "Britain's Got Talent"?
    • Who finished top of the Barclays Premier League for the 2008-09 season?
    • In "Prison Break", who was sent to the electric chair at the end of season four?
    • In the "SpongeBob Squarepants" episode "Squid's Visit", what did SpongeBob borrow from Squidward?

    As you can probably see above, interesting questions on Sports and Television are the most difficult to write, because they tend to deal with minutia and with specific topics that many people around the world have no interest in. Please try to be particularly careful with these topics, and try to write questions that are of interest to a global audience.

What question submissions are rejected?
    Our editors reserve the right to reject questions that they feel are inappropriate for use in our games. Here are the major causes for rejection:

    1. Questions that are FAR too obscure or BORING.
      Our goal is for easy to intermediate questions to be written, because these can be used in the widest variety of our games, and can be answered by the largest audience of people.

      That said, we do let difficult questions though if they are interesting. However, a question that an editor believes is both extremely difficult AND boring will be rejected.

      Example: "Who won Biggest Loser Season 3?"

      This question is difficult because it is from a specific U.S. TV show AND it is boring. Most people don't LEARN anything from this question if they get it wrong. It is meaningless to most people, and does not deserve a spot in our game.

      Another example: "What color shirt was Fred wearing when he was driving to work in the movie "Office World" "?

      The number of people who really care about this question or its answer is minimal. I don't. My wife doesn't. The editor you submit it to probably doesn't. It won't make it through. We simply don't want to burden "new question game" players with questions that we believe will fail from the get go.

    2. Questions that are ambiguous.
      If you are writing about a TV show, please state the name of the TV show in the question. If it is about a sport, name the sport. A good trivia question is concise but contains all of the information someone needs to know to answer it.

      Example: "What player scored the most runs in 2003?" is ambiguous. What sport is it referring to?

      Example 2: "Who played Spock?" is ambiguous. So is "Who played Spock in Star Trek?" (TV or movie?). So is "Who played Spock in the Star Trek movie?" (which one?). Instead use, "Who played Spock in the 2009 movie, "Star Trek"?"

    3. Questions that are duplicates.
      If the question has already been asked by another FunTrivia player or in a quiz, we will reject it. There are ways that you can take a question and make it fresh though through a little creativity.

    4. Questions that are very similar to what you have just submitted:
      Please make sure that if you submit more than one question in a short period of time that they all be completely different, preferably on different topics.

      If you submit a question "What does R stand for in the rainbow acronym, ROYGBIV?" followed by "What does O stand for in the rainbow...", etc, etc, we will reject all but one of your submissions.

      Please do not find a niche topic and then ask 10 questions on that topic in one evening. Feel free to return to a topic after a few weeks, but variety is key!

    5. Lack of interesting info.
      We request that every question contain a bit of "interesting information" in the provided field to give players some more insight or information about the topic at hand. Try to find a related fun fact about the answer to help entertain or teach.

      Anything more than 3 sentences is probably overkill and may be truncated by the editor. We thank you for your enthusiasm, but we don't want players presented with essays either!

      Questions with little to no interesting information filled out will be turned back.

    6. Questions that are time dependent.

      When we accept a question, we want to make sure that it can remain unmodified for years -- hopefully decades -- and stay fresh.

      The question "Who is the president of the United States?" very well could go stale in 4 years.

      The question "What is the name of John Grisham's latest novel?" will go stale the next time he writes a novel. The question "How many New York marathons have there been?" will go stale next year.

      Any question starting off as "Who is currently..." is likely time-dependent too.

      In general, ask yourself this question before you submit: "If I am asked this question in the year 2020, will the answer still be the same?"

      Questions like this are immediately rejected.

    The accepting / denying of questions is inherently subjective. There will be times when your question gets rejected and you don't agree with the editor. That is just how things are, because we need to weed out material that we don't believe has a chance of our players enjoying.

Can I ask specific British / Canadian / etc Questions?
    Absolutely, as long as the questions are interesting or entertaining to a global audience.

    Put yourself in the shoes of different people around the world and ask, "is this question at all interesting, important, or significant?"

    A question about the name of the 423rd episode of Dr. Who? Bad idea. Few Brits care about this question, let alone Californians and Russians.

    Something interesting about Big Ben, or a fun fact about Britain that's surprising and interesting? Go for it!

    Note that U.S. questions are also judged on this same criteria! Frankly, we don't care what number some obscure hockey player wore in the 1993 season, or what Buffy the Vampire Slayer said in episode 33329!