How to play BrainRank

The complete guide to the daily 10-question general-knowledge gauntlet — what it is, how a round works, how you get ranked against the world, and how to score higher.

What BrainRank is

BrainRank is a free daily trivia game. Every day at midnight UTC, one shared set of 10 general-knowledge questions unlocks for the entire world, and everyone gets a single attempt at the same questions. Instead of grading you against a fixed answer key, BrainRank ranks you against everyone else who played today — a live global percentile that keeps shifting as more people play. The questions span evergreen topics: world geography, natural science, everyday math and logic, language and words, generic history, the arts, and the myths and legends of the ancient world. Think of it as Wordle for general knowledge, with a scoreboard.

How to play

1. Open BrainRank and press Play today’s 10.
2. Answer one question at a time. Each has four options and a roughly 15-second timer ring — if it runs out, the question counts as wrong and the game moves on.
3. Tap an answer to lock it in. You get an instant right or wrong flash and auto-advance. There is no going back and no changing an answer once it is in.
4. After the tenth question, your score (0–10) resolves into a result: your percentile (for example, "Top 18% today"), a bell curve showing exactly where you land, and your current day streak.
5. Share your scoreboard card with friends, then come back tomorrow to keep the streak alive. Miss a day and the streak resets to zero.

Tips to rank higher

• Read all four options before committing. The distractors are written to look plausible and catch a quick reflex.
• Trust your first instinct on facts you know cold. The timer rewards decisiveness, and over-thinking a sure answer just burns seconds you may need later.
• When unsure, eliminate first. Rule out the two obviously wrong choices, then pick between the remaining pair — a coin-flip beats a timeout.
• Don’t let one hard question rattle you. Each question is independent, so a single miss won’t sink your rank if you stay steady through the rest.
• Play at a consistent time each day. A daily habit builds the streak, and a warmed-up brain reads and answers the questions faster.

Frequently asked questions

Is BrainRank free?

Yes — completely free and ad-supported. There is no account, no login, and no in-app purchase. Open the page and you can play today’s set right away.

How is my percentile calculated?

When you finish, your score is tallied into today’s anonymous histogram of all players, and you get back the share of players you scored at or above. Early in the day, before enough people have played for that to mean anything, BrainRank honestly shows your raw rank instead — for example "#7 of 30 so far" — rather than inventing a crowd.

When does a new set start?

Every day at 00:00 UTC. A single shared set of 10 questions unlocks for the whole world, and the countdown on the result screen shows exactly how long until the next set opens.

Do the questions ever repeat?

Not for a long time. The whole question bank is dealt out ten a day in a shuffled order, so every question in the bank is served once before any of them comes back around — more than a month of play at the current size. The bank also grows: new packs are added over time, which lengthens the rotation further. New questions only ever apply from the day they are added forward, so a day that has already been played is never rewritten and the archive stays an accurate record of what the world actually saw.

Can I play more than once a day?

No. One shared set, one attempt. After you play, you’ll see your saved result until the next day’s questions unlock — that single-shot format is what makes the daily rank and the streak mean something.

Curious how you’d have done on an earlier day? Every past puzzle is preserved, with answers and explanations, in the daily archive.