QUIZEBRA

Quizebra has twenty free daily games in four topics: six about geography, six about football, four brain games and four chess games. Each one gets a new puzzle every day, the same puzzle for everyone, and once the day’s puzzle is done you can keep playing practice rounds. There are also six country quizzes and four club quizzes. Whoever does best across a topic’s daily games each day becomes its Daily Whiz. No account and nothing to install.

What games does Quizebra have?

Six geography games. Name the Flag zooms out of a flag and Guess the Country zooms out of a country’s outline, both against a twenty-second clock. Find the Color shows a flag with its colors wrong and asks you to fix them on sliders, one color, then two, then three. Find the Country hides one country behind clues about its continent, population, area and direction. Match the Country gives you eight countries and eight categories to sort them into. Order the Country gives you eight and one measure to put them in order by, which can be population, area, coastline, highest peak, population density or land neighbors. There are also six one-off country quizzes. All six geography games.

Six football games, all built on real careers. Who Has More? puts two players and one number in front of you and asks which of them has more, with eight seconds per duel. Guess the Club names a club’s former players one at a time until you work out the club, and Guess the Player does the same with a player’s clubs. Match the Player and Order the Player have you place or sort players by goals, games, titles and market value. Build the Team has you pick the best of four players, five times over, to fill a formation by goals, games or market value. There are also four club quizzes. All six football games.

Four brain games, which need no knowledge at all, only thinking. Logic shows a set of tiles that follow a rule and asks which tile completes it. Numbers asks for the missing number in a sequence, a grid, a number wheel or a set of scales. Spatial has you turn, flip and fold shapes in your head. Each of those three is three puzzles a day, easy to hard, with sixty seconds and one try for each. Memory shows you a picture for a few seconds and then asks what you saw, five times a day and with no clock. All four brain games.

Four chess games. In Juicers you start eight to twelve points of material ahead of the computer and have to checkmate it in as few moves as you can; in Horde you have only pawns against its pieces. The computer is Lozza, an open-source chess engine that runs on your own device at a fixed depth, so everyone faces exactly the same replies. Mate in One and Mate in Two give you three puzzles a day from the Lichess puzzle database, sixty seconds (Mate in One) or ninety seconds (Mate in Two) and one try each. All four chess games.

Why did I build Quizebra?

I’m Sven, a psychologist and data scientist by training, and I build and run Quizebra on my own. Quizebra is four things I never get tired of, put in one place: geography, football, brain puzzles and chess, each with a bit of competition on top.

Data is what I work with, and it is what these games are made of. Most of them start as a table of real figures rather than a list of questions, and code I wrote turns that table into puzzles under rules I set.

In Order the Country, no two of the eight countries may sit within 10% of each other on population, area or coastline, so the answer never comes down to a rounding error. In Build the Team, any round where two players share the top value is thrown away, so there is always exactly one right answer. More than 5,700 geography and football puzzles have come out of that, before counting the brain and chess games, and five of the games deal from their country pools fresh every day.

The psychologist half shows up in the difficulty. Too easy and you learn nothing, too hard and you stop playing, so it is built to climb instead of sitting still. A run of Who Has More? opens with two players about 87 apart on the statistic in question and ends with five pairs about 1 apart. The page stays dark and quiet so that nothing competes with the puzzle.

My oldest interest is the one behind the brain games. As a kid I loved number sequences and doubling numbers in my head, and later I enjoyed doing IQ tests, which is where the brain games come from. They took more work than anything else on the site. Every puzzle needed real thought: one clear rule and one right answer. The wrong options had to be close enough that the only way to the answer is to find the rule. Many were rebuilt several times before they were fair, and my psychology background helped most here, in judging what makes a puzzle easy or hard.

Chess came a little later. I started playing when I was about ten, and my mom soon bought me a chess computer. It was amazing, and also far too good for me: I never beat it once. Years later, the chess boom on YouTube pulled me back in: tournaments like PogChamps, and above all Hikaru Nakamura’s streams. Now I mostly play five-minute blitz, and I always wanted to try some variants, so I built two. Horde gives you nothing but pawns, and Juicers is a nod to Hikaru: it is his slang for every piece that isn’t a pawn.

Everyone gets the same puzzle on the same day, so the leaderboard is a real comparison and not a private score. Beating a friend and arguing about it afterward is half the point.

Building it alone is the part I enjoy most. If something bothers me on a Tuesday it is fixed on a Tuesday, and every decision on the site is mine to get right or wrong.

Where do the puzzles come from?

The geography games are built from real borders, flags and country statistics, and the three wrong options for each flag and each country outline are hand-picked: flags that look alike, or countries that sit nearby. They are never random. The football games are built from real career records, and in most of them a player still playing in a league is kept out of that league’s goals and games puzzles, so the number you are judging cannot change after the next matchday. Market value always means a career high rather than today’s. The brain puzzles need no outside data: they come from rules I wrote, and each one was checked by hand before it went in. The chess puzzles come from the Lichess puzzle database, which anyone may use freely, and every Juicers and Horde start was played out by the engine first and kept only if it ended in checkmate every time. The sources are listed on the topic pages for geography, football and chess.

The games run in your browser. A few things leave it: your results, daily and practice, so the leaderboards and your own history work; a random ID that tells a returning browser from a new one; a short label for how you first arrived, such as youtube or direct; and a count of how many people start each game. A rating or note in the brain games, or a message you send through the feedback form, leaves it too, but only if you choose to send it. Reach a day’s top five and a name goes on the leaderboard beside your result, either one you type or an automatic one. There are no ads and no third-party trackers, and nothing is sold to anyone. The privacy page has the rest.

How is Quizebra paid for?

Every game is free, and that is not a trial. Running the site costs money. At some point I will ask the people who can afford it to pay what they think it is worth, so it stays free for everyone else. That will be voluntary, and every game will keep working whether you pay or not.

Frequently asked questions

Is Quizebra free?

Yes. Every game, every day, no payment.

Do I need an account?

No. Every game opens and plays straight away. If you reach a day’s top five you can type a name for the leaderboard, and that is as far as it goes.

How often do new puzzles appear?

Daily, for all twenty games, at midnight London time (GMT/BST).

Can I play more than once a day?

Yes. Past the daily challenge, every game also has unlimited practice rounds.

Is the same puzzle shown to everyone?

Yes. Each day’s puzzle is identical for every player worldwide, so a shared score is a fair comparison.

What is the Daily Whiz?

The Daily Whiz is the best player of the day in a topic: the Daily GeoWhiz, FootyWhiz, BrainWhiz and ChessWhiz. Each day your place in each of that topic’s daily games is added up, and the lowest total wins. A game you skip counts as one place worse than last, so playing them all is the best way to win. The player with the most Daily Whiz wins is that topic’s all-time GOAT: the GEOWHIZ-GOAT, FOOTYWHIZ-GOAT, BRAINWHIZ-GOAT or CHESSWHIZ-GOAT.

Is the data real?

Yes. Geography uses real boundary and flag data; football uses real career records, and in most of the football games a player still playing in a league is kept out of that league’s goals and games puzzles. The brain puzzles are built from rules written for the site, each one checked by hand. The chess puzzles come from real games in the Lichess puzzle database. Nothing here is a fixed trivia list.

Who made this?

I did. I’m Sven, a psychologist and data scientist by training, and I build and run Quizebra on my own - the game mechanics, the design, and the data behind every puzzle.

Quizebra gets better with every message. If you have an idea, found a bug or just want to say what you think of a game, write to me here.