How to play Ball Knowledge

The daily sports trivia game where the obvious answer is worth the least.

Most trivia games ask for one right answer. Ball Knowledge asks for any right answer from a list, then rewards you for how few other people thought of it. Anybody can name LeBron James. Naming a backup who won a title off the bench shows you actually watch the games, and it scores five times as much.

The Daily Mix

Every day brings a new card of seven prompts drawn from football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, golf, tennis and the Olympics. Everyone gets the same card on the same date, and a new one starts at midnight where you live.

• 25 seconds per prompt. The clock starts when the prompt appears.
• Unlimited guesses. A wrong guess costs nothing but time, so keep typing until you land one or the buzzer goes.
• One answer counts. Your first correct answer locks in your points for that prompt, and the game moves to the reveal.
• Spelling is forgiving. Common nicknames, last names and small typos are accepted when they can only mean one answer. "Tom Brady" and "Brady" both count; a name that could fit two answers is not guessed for you.

How scoring works

Every correct answer falls into one of five rarity tiers, based on how often players give it:

Each prompt has exactly one Certified Scout answer. A perfect Daily Mix is 700 points, which means finding the rarest correct answer seven times in a row. It almost never happens.

Your total earns a rank for the day: Benchwarmer, Rookie (100), Starter (220), All-Star (340), MVP (460) and Hall of Fame (580).

Where rarity comes from

When a prompt is new, its rarity is an educated estimate of how often fans would name each answer. After that, real players set it. Every correct answer is counted once per player per prompt, and the tiers are re-ranked from those counts every night at midnight UTC. An answer that looked obscure can slide down to Casual if lots of people know it, and a forgotten superstar can climb.

Because the ranks only change overnight, everyone playing on the same day is scored the same way.

The reveal

After each prompt you see which tier your answer landed in, roughly what share of players give that answer, and often a short fact about the question. The full answer list stays hidden, so the prompt is still fresh when it comes around again and nobody can copy a list for tomorrow.

Sport dailies

Prefer one sport? Each of the seven sports has its own daily of five prompts: Football, Basketball, Baseball, Hockey, Soccer, Golf and Tennis. They follow the same rules and have their own leaderboards, so a hockey fan can top the hockey board without knowing a thing about golf.

Practice rounds

A practice round deals a random set of prompts, avoiding today's card where it can. Play as many as you like. Practice scores don't count toward your streak or any leaderboard, but your correct answers still help set rarity.

Streaks and leaderboards

Your streak is the number of days in a row you've finished the Daily Mix. You can play without an account, and your progress is saved in your browser. Signing in with Google is optional; it keeps your streak and scores across devices and puts you on the leaderboards under a nickname you choose.

Each mode has two boards. Today ranks everyone's first score of the day and resets daily. All-time best ranks each player's single best daily score from any day, with ties going to whoever got there first.

Playing online: Shot Clock

Shot Clock is a live game for 2 to 8 players. Start a room, share its code or link, and pick the categories: one sport, several, a question type such as Origins, Olympics or Sport IQ, or a mix of everything. No account is needed.

• Pass the ball. Everyone sees the same prompt. The player with the ball must name a correct answer nobody in the room has said yet. A correct answer passes the ball to the next player.
• The shot clock. You get 12 seconds on the first turn of a round. After that, the rarer the answer just given, the less time the next player gets: 10 seconds after a Bandwagon answer, down to 5 after a Certified Scout. A rare answer helps you twice, by keeping you alive and by rushing the next player.
• Wrong guesses are free. Keep guessing while your clock runs. Everyone in the room watches you type.
• The buzzer costs a life. Run out of time with the ball and you lose a life, then a new prompt starts. The host chooses 1, 2, 3 or 5 lives each. The last player with lives left wins.

Online games don't affect daily scores, streaks or rarity, and rooms are deleted about an hour after the last activity.

Where the answers come from

Answer lists are built from official league records, the Olympic results database and standard references, and checked by hand before a prompt goes live. Most prompts are fixed pieces of history, such as Super Bowl winners or Olympic host countries, so their answers never go out of date. A few use live season stats; those are refreshed every week and show the date they were last checked. If a list says "through 2025", answers from after that don't count yet.

Spot a wrong or missing answer? Tell us and we'll fix it.

Questions people ask

Why did my answer score low? I thought it was rare.

Rarity is set by what other players actually say, not by how famous the player is. If a lot of people think of the same "deep cut", it isn't a deep cut anymore.

Can I play yesterday's card?

No. Each day's card is only playable that day, so leaderboards stay fair. Practice rounds give you as many extra prompts as you want.

Does it cost anything?

No. Ball Knowledge is free to play and is supported by ads, which never appear during a question or an online game.

Play today's card