Rules
How to play Outrivia
Outrivia gives you a trivia prompt and 30 seconds to answer it. Any accepted answer scores, but the rarer it is, the more it scores and the more of the crowd follows you home. Here is a whole run, from the first prompt to the share card.
What happens in a round
The prompt. Each round opens with a trivia prompt that names a category, such as “Name a capital city in Europe”. There are no options to pick from: type an answer of your own and press Enter or the arrow button (Go on a phone keyboard).
The clock. You have 30 seconds. The timer bar turns solid red when 10 seconds are left, and a clock ticks through the last five. If you switch to another tab, the clock waits for you.
One answer. Your first accepted answer ends the round. If an answer isn't on our list, you see “Not on our list” and the clock keeps running, so you can try another for as long as time allows.
Passing. Stuck? Press Pass to move on. A pass, an empty answer or running out of time scores nothing for that prompt, but it never takes away points you already have.
What counts as an answer
Each prompt has a prepared list of accepted answers, from the famous to the forgotten, and Outrivia is forgiving about how you type them.
What Outrivia lets slide
- Capital letters and accents
- Case, accents and punctuation don't matter, and a leading “the”, “a” or “an” is dropped. Reykjavík, reykjavik and REYKJAVIK are the same answer.
- Plurals and extra words
- A plural counts as its singular, and on many prompts an extra category word is fine: for a kind of cheese, “Cheddar cheese” is simply Cheddar.
- Other names
- Common alternative names are on the list too, so Lisboa counts as Lisbon.
- Small typos
- In an answer of five characters or more, one slip is forgiven: a letter missing, added, swapped or wrong. The result card then shows how it read your answer, such as We read “Skopie” as Skopje. Shorter answers must be spelled exactly, so Rom isn't read as Rome.
When it isn't on the list
- Try another
- A refused answer costs nothing but time. The round stays open until an answer is accepted, you pass or the clock runs out.
- Should this count?
- No list is complete. If an answer was turned down and the round then ends with a pass or the clock, the result card offers “Should this count? Tell us”. One tap sends us the prompt and your answer. Every answer the game turns down is counted too, without anything that says who typed it, and we add the ones that should count.
How the reveal works
A run starts with 100 little tourists around the table. They are the crowd you play for.
As soon as you answer, tiles pop up for the five answers most people give, and the crowd hurries onto them: the more common the answer, the more people stand on its tile. Everyone else waits by Other answers.
Then your figurine hops to your answer. Name one of those five and you squeeze onto a busy tile. Name anything else and you get a tile of your own, farther out the rarer your answer is.
For every 25 points you score, one person leaves the crowd and walks over to your home tile, where they stay for the rest of the run. The number on your tile keeps count, and the scoring rules show how many each band pulls.
Almost nobody thinks of this. ×2 question.
Most said Paris, London, Rome (est.)
The result card sums up the round: your band, your answer and your points, a line about the band, how many people followed you, and “Most said” with the three most common answers. That list is marked (est.) because it comes from scores we set in advance, not from a live count.
The next prompt comes up on its own. To hurry a reveal along, tap the table or the “Tap to skip” button.
The five bands
Every accepted answer lands in one of five bands, from the answer everyone gives to the one almost nobody does.
- CrowdMost people's first answer.10 points
- PopularPlenty of people think of this.25 points
- UncommonFewer people get here.50 points
- StandoutFew people think of this.75 points
- OutlierAlmost nobody thinks of this.100 points
A band says how few people would think of an answer, not how long it is or how hard it is to spell. Later questions multiply its points, up to four times. See how Outrivia scoring works for the thresholds, the weights and a worked example.
The Daily and Unlimited
The Daily
Ten prompts a day, the same for everyone on the same date. New ones arrive at midnight where you are, and each Daily has a number: Daily #1 was September 28, 2026, the day Outrivia launched.
Your progress is saved in this browser. Leave in the middle with ✕ and the intro card offers to pick up where you stopped, such as “Resume at question 4”.
Unlimited
The same game with no daily cap. Choose 10 or 20 prompts, or endless, which keeps going until you stop. The first ten prompts of every run go from easy to hard, and ✕ ends a run early with the results you have so far.
Unlimited runs can't be picked up later and never touch your streak, which makes Outrivia Unlimited the place to practise.
Keep your streak
Finish the Daily on consecutive days to build a streak. The card at the end of your run keeps count: “Streak started” on the first day, then “2-day streak”, “3-day streak” and so on. Miss a day, and the next Daily you finish starts a new streak.
A friend's challenge on today's Daily counts as your Daily, but Unlimited runs and older Dailies don't. Like your progress, your streak lives in this browser, so it doesn't follow you to another device or a private window.
After the run
The end card shows how many of the 100 you pulled, your points and Outliers, your title and a row of coloured dots, one per question. Press Answers to go back over every prompt: the answer you gave and its band, the crowd's favourites and up to three rare answers you could have tried.
Share & challenge makes share cards and a short text like this one. The text shows your crowd, a coloured circle for each question and your title, but none of your answers, so friends can read it before they play.
A Daily, or an Unlimited run of 10 or 20 prompts, also comes with a challenge link. A friend who opens it plays the same prompts, sees your pick on the table after each of their answers, and ends on the board of everyone who played that link. The scoring page explains what a challenge compares.
Outrivia #12 · 🧍40/100 🟢⚪🔵🟢🟣⚪🔵⚫🟠🟢 Side-Stepper outrivia.com/c/…
Quick tips
- Look past your first thought. It is usually the crowd's too, so treat it as a signpost, not an answer.
- Answer before the clock does. Any accepted answer scores something, and running out of time scores nothing.
- Be bolder late in the Daily. Questions 9 and 10 count four times, so that is where a rare answer pays most.
- Type fast, not perfectly. Capital letters and accents don't matter, and one slip in a longer answer is forgiven.
- Learn from every reveal. Most said shows where the crowd stood, and the answers review shows the rare ones you missed.
Ready for today's ten?
Ten prompts, 30 seconds each, and a crowd of 100 waiting to see what you say.
