Daily Top Answer

Top Answer asks you a survey question and shows you the ranked list of answers people gave, with every one hidden. Each answer carries the share of people who said it, and finding it adds that share to your score. You get five strikes, and the point of the game is guessing what everybody else thought rather than what you think.

How to play Top Answer

  1. Read the question and the category above it, then type a guess and press Guess.
  2. A guess that matches a hidden answer reveals it in its ranked slot along with the percentage of people who gave it, and adds that percentage to your score.
  3. A guess that matches nothing costs one of five strikes; the crosses in the score bar show how many you have spent.
  4. Re-guessing something you have already found is free — it just says "already found" and costs you nothing.
  5. Near-misses are forgiven: spelling is matched loosely, with more slack on longer answers and none at all on answers of three letters or fewer.
  6. Skip adds a strike and reveals nothing, so it is only there to move the round along.
  7. Find every answer to win; spend all five strikes and the round ends with the answers you missed revealed above.

The empty top slot is the clue

The question is "name a topping people put on pizza" and the board has five slots. You type mushroom and it lands in slot two at 18%. You type cheese and it lands in slot three at 14%. Slot one is still blank, which tells you something more popular than mushroom is still out there — and for pizza that can only really be pepperoni. Type peperoni, one letter short, and it still lands, because an answer that long tolerates two characters of misspelling. Ham, meanwhile, is a perfectly sensible topping and a strike, because nobody in the survey said it.

Top Answer strategy

Answer as the crowd, not as yourself

The list is what people actually said, not what is correct or interesting. For "name a fruit" the crowd says apple and banana, not persimmon. Your first three guesses should be the three most boring answers you can think of, because the boring answers are the ones carrying the big percentages.

Read the gaps in the ranking

The slots are ordered by popularity and stay in place as you fill them, so an empty slot above one you have found is a live clue. If you have filled ranks two and four, you know there is a more popular answer than the one at two and something sitting between them, which narrows the kind of answer you should be reaching for.

Let the category steer how broadly you answer

The category line above the question sets the register. A geography question wants countries and capitals, not regions; a food question usually wants the plain everyday name of a thing. Matching the level of specificity the category implies saves strikes on answers that are right in spirit and absent from the list.

Don't spend strikes on synonyms

Loose spelling matching forgives typos but it does not forgive a different word. If chips has landed, fries will not land again as a second answer, and trying a near-synonym of something already on the board is one of the cheapest ways to lose a strike. Move to a genuinely different answer instead.

Never press Skip

Skipping costs exactly the same strike a wrong guess costs and gives you nothing back — no reveal, no clue. A guess you only half-believe in is strictly better, because it at least has a chance of landing.

Frequently asked questions

How many strikes do I get?
Five. Every guess that matches no hidden answer costs one, and the fifth ends the round and reveals the answers you missed.
Does a spelling mistake cost me a strike?
Usually not. Answers are matched loosely, with about two characters of slack on longer answers and one on medium ones — though answers of three letters or fewer have to be exact.
How is my score worked out?
Each answer is worth the percentage of people who gave it, and your score is the total of the ones you find, shown against everything the board is worth.
Are there hints?
No. The only help the board gives is the ranked order of the answers, which tells you how popular the ones you have not found yet must be.
What does the Skip button do?
It adds a strike and moves on without revealing anything. There is almost never a reason to use it.
Is there a new question every day?
Yes, one a day and the same question for everyone, with a single attempt. It is free and there is no sign-up — the answers you have found are saved in your own browser if you close the tab. Past questions and their full answer lists are in the Top Answer archive.

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