Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

It doesn't really mean much of anything. We just like the sound of it.

You don't need one to play on Sporcle but here are six reasons why you want one.

Having a Sporcle account lets you:

Track your game plays, see your best scores, and challenge your friends

Earn badges

Comment on and rate games

Follow users and see how you compare to your friends

Create quizzes to share with your friends or the world

Get email alerts for new and popular games

And hey, it's free and easy, so go ahead.

Yes! You will need to have an account and be logged in for us to keep track of your results. It's easy to create a free account. Results are recorded for quizzes when you complete one of the following actions:

1. Get all the answers right
2. Run out of time
3. Click the 'Give up' button (after entering at least one answer)

If you leave a quiz page before one of these things happen, your results will not be recorded. When your score is recorded, your best score will also be displayed at the bottom of the page, along with the scores of your friends!

Yep there is the flagship Sporcle app as well as a Sporcle Live app. You can see all of our apps on this page.

The Daily Dose is your destination for quick diversions every day. You can find an outline of our current formats here. New quizzes of these types will be made available every day, so make sure to come back each day to find them.

Sporcle Groups are the best new way to get to know other Sporclers. You can post topics or quizzes to a group and interact with other members of the community.
You can find popular groups at our Groups Dashboard page.

Sporcle Editors are usually selected from the top quiz creators and commenters on the site. Their duties include looking for the top quizzes within their category for Editor Picks, making sure published quizzes are up to date, tagging quizzes and making updates to published quizzes. Sporcle is always keeping an eye out for the next great Editor, so keep making great games and helpful comments, and we may contact you when we have an opening.

A Curator is someone we believe is an expert in a particular subcategory and gains the ability to make 'Curator Picks' that show up on our subcategory pages. Check out our current curators and subcategory openings on the Curator page. To apply to be a Curator please drop us a note at our feedback page whenever you see an opening in a subcategory you are interested in!

We sure do! You can read all about it on our blog where we ask: What is a country?

Sorry, it is not possible to change your username.

If you need to delete your account, head on over to your settings page. You will need your account credentials to do so and be warned - this cannot be undone once it is complete.

This tracks the number of consecutive days you have played a quiz on Sporcle. FYI: It doesn't apply to Trivia Bingo.

The Triviamaster Score is a score given to a user based on quiz playing and activity. The higher the score, the more activity the user has had on Sporcle.

The score is based on a number of factors such as quiz playing, badge earning, challenges, and showdowns. The score can fluctuate up and down daily based off of a user's activity on the site.

Click here to see a leaderboard of the top 100 Triviamasters.

A trophy on the user profile gives a distinctive emblem for certain accomplishments and milestones on Sporcle. These include trophies for the number of years on Sporcle, play streaks and the number of plays a user's quizzes have received.

"Connect with Facebook" is a feature from Facebook that lets users use Facebook's login system on external websites such as Sporcle. Instead of creating a Sporcle account by entering your email address and password, you can just click on "Connect with Facebook" and everything is done automatically. You can also connect your Facebook to an existing Sporcle account - but make sure the associated email addresses match!

Users can follow each other on Sporcle to get notifications and see activity. You will automatically become friends with another user when you both follow each other. You should be able to see who is following you on your profile under the 'People' tab.

The Word Ladder app doesn't store any personal information on your device. If you would like to remove the data, you can uninstall the app from your phone.

Email verification allows us to verify the accuracy and quality of your email address. We want to make sure the email you give us works and goes to an actual person.

A bounced email is an email message that gets rejected by a mail server and/or gets returned to the sender because it cannot be delivered for some reason. Emails can bounce for a variety of reasons: the email address doesn’t exist or has a typo, the inbox is full, server outages, a Vacation/Auto-Reply might be on, and more.

A hard bounce means that the email address is permanently closed and not receiving electronic mail. A soft bounce is temporary, and may be caused by server outages or a full inbox.

It is likely that your email address has been marked as bounced by our email bot. Opening and whitelisting the emails you get from us can help in such instances. Whitelisting Sporcle's email address, or adding it to your list of contacts, can help. If any emails from us land in your spam folder, marking those as 'Not Spam' can also help.

If this happens, post a message in Groups, or an email to feedback@sporcle.com and we will promptly fix this issue.

You can adjust your email settings in your settings options here. Give this a review and uncheck emails you no longer wish to receive.

Definitely double check your spam folder and make sure our email didn't land in there. Otherwise, it is possible your email got marked as bounced in our system. Please reach out to us and we can look into it.

Sporcle Orange is our premium membership program. With Sporcle Orange you see zero ads, get extra features, and support the site. You can sign up here (prices in US dollars).

Once you have signed up for an Orange account, you can update your credit card information by visiting the Orange panel on your accounts settings page. You can click here to access that information.

If you have signed up for Orange and no longer want it, you can cancel your subscription at any time by visiting the Orange panel in your accounts settings, accessible by clicking here.

If you signed up for an Orange account and it expired, odds are that your credit card was declined for some reason. The most likely reason for this happening is that your credit card has expired. If that is the case, try signing up again here with a different card. Otherwise, you can always file a report on our Feedback page (accessible here) and a staff member will look into it.

In all probability you have signed up for an Orange membership and this charge is the cost of the subscription. If you are signed up for Orange, you will see it on your profile. If in doubt, drop us a line.

First you'll need to make sure you are logged in. Then navigate to the Game Creation Center and click the orange ‘Create a Sporcle Quiz’ button. From here choose which type of quiz you want to make and off you go. Check out this handy video to guide you through the process on how to make a quiz.

Go to the Game Creation Center and find the quiz you want to edit in the list of quizzes under the 'Contributed' tab. Click the edit icon.
Here you can make changes to the game. It might be a good idea to take the game offline if you are planning major changes. This can be done under the 'Finish Up' tab. Make sure to use this feature and not 'Make Quiz Private'. After the changes have been made, return to the 'Finish Up' tab and click 'Put Game Back Online.'

There sure is! Check out our quiz creation guides on the Sporcle blog. You can also get help from others in the How To & Tips group on Sporcle.

Classic quizzes are the original Sporcle quiz type. They involve players typing answers to written questions.

The clickable game type allow players to play a game without using the keyboard. These games pose a question or series of questions and the answers are selectable in the area below. Be warned, some games may include decoys. You can get help making a clickable quiz with our blog post on the topic.

Grid quizzes are a format that allows creators to make crossword puzzles, Sudoku, or various other games played on a grid. Here's a guide to making grid quizzes.

A slideshow quiz is a quiz where players typically identify people, places, or things in a series of images, or, in some cases, answer questions about those images. If you'd like to create one, check out this blog post for a handy guide.

A multiple choice quiz, as the name implies, involves the player choosing the correct answer out of a set of options. You can find our guide to creating multiple choice quizzes on the blog.

Picture Box quizzes present players with a set of images laid out in grid format. Players must correctly type an answer that corresponds to each image. Here's a nice little tutorial on how to create one.

Map quizzes require players to type in answers that coordinate to points on an image - usually a map. We've written a guide on creating map quizzes to help you create the best possible quizzes.

Picture click quizzes involve players clicking on different regions within an image based on questions or hints. For help creating picture click quizzes, check out our blog post on the topic.

Use a video editing program (such as 'Windows Movie Maker') where you can import the audio file and add an image. For the image, we highly recommend these Sporcle logo options - there's a dark version and a light version. Export it as a video and then upload on Youtube or another video hosting site.

Copy the embed code and place it into the Embed code box on the 'Game Info' tab of the quiz creation tools page.

Be sure to review the terms of service of these hosting sites to ensure that embedding content in a 3rd party site does not violate their terms. Violation of terms will result in your quiz being removed.

A wrong answer quiz is a special type of quiz on Sporcle where a quiz's bonus answers are actually marked as incorrect. To create bonus answers in quizzes put 'ee' in the last (extra) column. Move these answers to the last rows of the quiz. For wrong answers, you must check the appropriate box in the quiz creation center, and make sure all of your hints match just like a quiz with headings. We've also created a more detailed explanation over at the Sporcle Blog.

Ordinary creators (i.e. those who are not Editors/Curators) get to contribute 50 public quizzes in every calendar month, which resets on the 1st day of each month.
One caveat - no more than three in an hour.

If one of your quizzes is published to the front page, you get six extra bonus quizzes, but these expire at the end of the month. You can create up to 100 private quizzes in each month.

The Quizmaster Score is a score given to a creator based on quiz contributions. The higher the score, the greater the participation the creator has had in the Sporcle community.

The score is based on a number of factors including (but not limited to): the number of quizzes created since the public launch of Sporcle's quiz creation tools, number of times those quizzes have been played and the rating attributed to quizzes by other players. The score can fluctuate up and down each day as quizzes are created, played and rated.

Click here to see a leaderboard of the top 100 Quizmasters.

A variety of factors are involved in what is published on Sporcle.com. Here are some factors that we consider:

1. The quiz idea should be original.
2. It should include a valid source (if applicable).
3. Fits into our current cycle of quizzes.
4. It has been well received as a contributed quiz.
5. The quiz is topical.

Private quizzes do not show up on search or your profile, but you can still use the link to play your quiz, send to friends, and see results. Quizzes marked as private will not be featured or published by Sporcle. Only Sporcle moderators and admins can make a quiz public if it has been contributed as a private quiz. If you want your quiz to be made public, write in to feedback with a link to the quiz or post it in this group and a moderator can help you.

You cannot delete a quiz once it has been contributed, but you can take it offline. To do so, go to the ‘Finish Up’ tab while editing your quiz and click the ‘Take Game Offline’ button. An offline quiz can only be edited.

Retired quizzes are quizzes that were verified and published to the Sporcle home page, but are no longer actively updated and maintained by Sporcle staff. Retired quizzes are still considered 'published', but full editing control has been returned to the quiz creator for any updates they may need in the future.
A quiz may be retired if its source data is no longer available, if the content of the quiz was specific to a certain point in time, or for other reasons determined by the publishing team.

A playlist is a group of quizzes that are linked together and can be viewed from playlist pages or quiz pages. They can be used to save quizzes in one place and track progress. They can also be shared with other Sporcle users.

You can create a playlist by going to your Playlist Dashboard. From there you can make up to 100 playlists on anything you want!

You can create up to 10 new playlists each month. Each playlist can have up to 50 quizzes, which you can order however you'd like.

Embedding allows you to take a published quiz (or one that you have created) and post it on a web page outside of Sporcle. Click HERE for a nice little example.

In the game information box for each embeddable game is a link that says 'Embed Game'. Click on this link and in the window that opens, you'll see a field containing embed code for the quiz. Copy the code and paste it into your blog or website.

You can embed most classic, clickable, and multiple choice quizzes. Image quizzes and matching clickable quizzes can not currently be embedded.

A showdown is a competitive way to play quizzes on Sporcle. When you press the "Find Opponent" button on most quizzes, it will find you a showdown where you can compete against another player in real time. You can also visit the Showdown Hub to play a Showdown against other users in particular categories.

Challenges and showdowns are two types of competitive quiz playing on Sporcle. In a challenge, the two people in the challenge play the same quiz, on their own time, and whoever has the better score after both people have completed the quiz wins. In a showdown, the two people in the showdown play the same quiz, at the same time, and whoever gets more correct answers before the timer runs out wins. Both count as a quiz play for badges and overall quiz stats.

The hub is a page that shows Showdown activity. This is a good place to find matches that other users are actively queuing for, as well as see the daily leaders and recent history across Sporcle. This page is constantly updating, so keep checking back for new action.

A Showdown 'party' keeps you connected to your opponent, and allows you to play together for as many quizzes as you want. You can party-up from within an active Showdown OR from the dropdown in the chat box from your friends list. Your panel will persist across all Sporcle pages and you can chat with that opponent until you decide to leave the party.

You can Showdown against your friends by inviting them to party up from the chat box. (Note, this means your friends will have to be active on Sporcle at the same time you are.) They will get an alert that says you're ready to party!

The number next to your username is your rating. Your rating updates after you play against other users. This rating will appear on your profile stats page and during play against other users. Your rating will start at 1400, and then you gain and lose points depending on the rating of your opponents. For example, winning against a higher-ranked opponent will gain you more points than winning against a lower-ranked opponent.

Challenges give you the chance to see how you stack up against your friends.
On a quiz page, you have the option to 'Challenge your friends'. You can challenge other Sporcle users or enter in emails of people you know. You can also manage your challenges on the Challenges page. You can see your wins and losses, challenge others, check received challenges, and get challenges from the Sporcle Bot.

Yes! You can hide your Showdown activity from your profile by going to the Privacy tab in your settings page and unchecking the 'Allow anyone to see my showdown activity' option.

Showdown is currently in a Public Beta phase. We've been working on this for a while and it is a solid product, but it still has some bugs and needs some overall refinement. Your feedback will help us get there. If you find a problem, please let us know here.

Sporcle Events are different games that we host in local communities and virtually.

As long as you provide your host your team's league number, you can name yourself anything that floats your boat at your show. The team name you initially registered online will display on your venue's scoreboard. If you would like to change your team's name on your venue's scoreboard please send that request to league@sporcle.com.

Please reach out to us at accessibility@sporcle.com.

Stats on your team page are shown for games played in the last 12 months, although some passport stamps reflect cumulative accomplishments earned from the time your team was formed. Games won is defined by the most cumulative total points earned in a single location in one night. Team ranks are calculated using final scores and standings over the last 30 days, plus the type of game played. For example, if you play Pub Quiz most often you'll be ranked against other teams that play Pub Quiz in your state, and nationally.

During regular season play there is not a team size limit. During the Venue Tournaments and League Championships, there will be a team size limit of five players per team.

Sporcle Events quizzes at bars and restaurants are free to players, come and enjoy.

Our pricing is one of the more unique things that we provide to our partnered venues. Instead of charging you an arbitrary flat rate (like most trivia companies) – no matter how many butts they are putting into your seats - Sporcle charges you based on how many people are playing trivia that night. This means it is more reflective of your sales that night and incentivizes us and the host to work harder to make that impact on your revenue. We do have a minimum and a ceiling (maximum rate) that you would never go above and would be happy to share the exact numbers in a one-on-one conversation.

We do have a 12 week service agreement, that relates directly to how long we feel it takes to build a show, but it is just for the first 12 weeks. After the 12 weeks is up we continue on a ‘handshake” – no additional service agreements or extensions are required. Based on our experience of 9 plus years, we have found that it takes about 12 weeks to grow and develop your show. We want to make sure we are all committed - us, you, and the host - to growing your revenue and this agreement hold us all accountable to do just that.

Our trivia hosts have everything they need to run a successful show – sound equipment, game supplies, and their top-notch entertainment skills. They will get there early, typically 30-45 minutes before the start of show to get set up and walk around to get people signed up. We understand you have your business to run, so we want to make this as easy on you as we can!

We have put together a separate Pub Owners FAQ here.

The Globe is our way of giving back to the community of players that participate in Sporcle Events. The Globe includes league play, digital passport stamps, cash prize tournaments, and more.

Most stamps are not retroactive and teams start accruing credit towards them once they're announced. However, the following stamps are retroactive back through 2013: Games Played, Points Earned, Weekly Streak

The Globe is free for teams to join!

Any location that hosts at least four nights during any given season will qualify for a League Championship.

Any Sporcle Pub Quiz, Stump, Opinionation, or Virtual Pub Quiz event allows for teams to participate in league play.

Any team that won a league championship during the calendar year has first dibs at RSVP’ing for the Globe Game of their choice. For additional remaining spots, teams must have at least participated in ten games during the calendar year. The Globe Games will be held on December 10, 2022.

Your team page will display personalized stats on how you're performing. To find your team page, visit The Globe homepage at https://www.sporcle.com/events/the-globe/ while you're logged in. You'll see a button titled My Team. Additionally, each location page has a leaderboard tracking the teams that play there.

Yes. SporcleCon will have cash prizes for certain events and raffle prizes throughout the weekend. The cash prize pool will be announced closer to the event.

Coming September 2023, SporcleCon is trivia weekend that's fun for everyone.

We've designed SporcleCon to have a multitude of individual and team based events. Don't be afraid to come alone, but be prepared to leave with lots of new friends.

You can read the latest information on our policy relating to Covid-19 here.

Yes. While the content will certainly be geared more towards adults, SporcleCon is certainly family friendly. Bring your kids. We'll quiz them.

Teams for Battle of the Brains will be limited to six players. We will ask you to provide your team member names during event registration.

VIP tables for Battle of the Brains will be assigned based on the number of VIP members on the team. So, not everyone needs a VIP ticket to get the closer table, but the more people that do, the better the table will be.

Teams are limited to four players for the VIP Pub Quiz and each member of the team must have a VIP ticket. The time of the VIP Pub Quiz will be announced soon.