Logic36 min

How Close

Guess the number. No calculator, no lifeline, just your instinct for scale.

Ten questions, each one a real quantity, and one guess apiece. There is no multiple choice to hide behind — you type a number and find out how far off you were.

Scoring is by ratio rather than by difference, which is the only fair way to do it. Being a hundred out on the number of bones in a body is a wild miss; being a hundred out on the distance to the Moon in kilometres is a bullseye. Get within about double or half the real figure and you will score well.

The questions are drawn at random from a pool of more than a hundred, so playing again is a different game rather than the same one with the answers already known.

How it works

Read the question and commit to a number. One guess, no going back.
Closer is better, and closeness is measured by ratio, not by how many units you missed by.
The real figure and your gap are shown straight after, with where the number comes from.
Ten rounds, getting further from everyday scale as you go.

Common questions

How exactly is a guess scored?: By the ratio between your guess and the real figure, not the difference. Exactly right is 100. Out by a factor of two — double or half — is about 70. Out by a factor of ten is zero. This is the only way to score estimates across wildly different scales fairly: a hundred-unit miss means something completely different on a question about bones than on one about kilometres to the Sun.
Some of these numbers are disputed. Which one do you use?: The figure quoted in the explanation after each round, which is the commonly published one. Population, the number of islands in Indonesia and the count of a body’s muscles are all genuinely contested, and the explanation says so where it matters. A round is scored against the stated figure rather than against a claim that no other figure is defensible.
Do I get the same questions if I play again?: Almost certainly not. Ten rounds are drawn at random from a pool of more than a hundred, so a second run is a different game. If you share your result, though, whoever opens the link gets your exact ten in your exact order — the selection travels in the link.
Can I use a calculator?: You can, and it will not help much. Almost nothing here is calculable from the question — it is recall and reasoning about scale. The two or three rounds that are arithmetic are in the warm-up on purpose.

These are published reference figures, rounded where rounding is honest — population counts, astronomical distances and biological averages all move depending on who measured them and when. A round is scored against the figure quoted in its explanation, not against a claim that the figure is the only defensible one. This is a game about intuition for scale, and it measures nothing about you beyond how well you guessed today.

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How it works

Read the question and commit to a number. One guess, no going back.

Closer is better, and closeness is measured by ratio, not by how many units you missed by.

The real figure and your gap are shown straight after, with where the number comes from.

Ten rounds, getting further from everyday scale as you go.

Common questions

How exactly is a guess scored?

By the ratio between your guess and the real figure, not the difference. Exactly right is 100. Out by a factor of two — double or half — is about 70. Out by a factor of ten is zero. This is the only way to score estimates across wildly different scales fairly: a hundred-unit miss means something completely different on a question about bones than on one about kilometres to the Sun.

Some of these numbers are disputed. Which one do you use?

The figure quoted in the explanation after each round, which is the commonly published one. Population, the number of islands in Indonesia and the count of a body’s muscles are all genuinely contested, and the explanation says so where it matters. A round is scored against the stated figure rather than against a claim that no other figure is defensible.

Do I get the same questions if I play again?

Almost certainly not. Ten rounds are drawn at random from a pool of more than a hundred, so a second run is a different game. If you share your result, though, whoever opens the link gets your exact ten in your exact order — the selection travels in the link.

Can I use a calculator?

You can, and it will not help much. Almost nothing here is calculable from the question — it is recall and reasoning about scale. The two or three rounds that are arithmetic are in the warm-up on purpose.