If you have been around me in person over the last year or so, I have most likely mentioned Sporcle at least once or twice. If you have never heard of Sporcle before, it’s a trivia website where you can make your own quizzes, play other people’s quizzes, earn badges, play challenges, and other fun things like that. I enjoy it so much that this is actually not the first time I’ve written about it here.
Last year, I started creating my own quizzes on the site. Initially, these were all sports related, but in recent months, I have begun to branch out a little bit with some quizzes about video games. Since I wrote my first Sporcle article, I have become a bit more experimental with my quizzes, something I hope to continue to do in the future. For all of you Nintendo fans out there, I have made a few Mario Kart quizzes, like this one, for example.
Since the previous summer, I have earned nine additional Curator Picks, an Editor Pick, and two of my quizzes even got published to Sporcle’s front page. It is such a cool feeling to be able to see one of your quizzes get recognized like this, it only makes me want to make more of them (don’t worry, I still have a LOT of quiz ideas that I want to get to at some point).
That being said, my own quizzes are not the main focus of this article. Instead, I would like to take some time to talk about some of the other aspects of the site. Making quizzes is only a small part of being on Sporcle, and I want to highlight some of those other areas here.
Like with apps and games like Duolingo, you can build up a play streak on Sporcle by playing at least one quiz every day. Currently, my play streak is at over 300 days, about a month away from a full year. When your play streak reaches a new milestone (e.g. 50 days, 100 days, 150 days, etc.), you get a new trophy to display on your profile’s trophy case. Over the course of my time on Sporcle, I have seen some users who have garnered play streaks that have lasted over 2,000 days, meaning that they have played a quiz every day for about five years. Seeing that on other people’s profiles has made me want to keep on playing, and I hope to eventually have a 2,000-day streak of my own.
One other part of the trophy case is how many badges you’ve earned, which goes up incrementally with each new total (at the time I am writing this, my most recent badge milestone is 700 badges). Badges can be earned by completing specific tasks, like getting 50% or 100% on one or multiple quizzes, or playing a certain type of quiz every day for a given amount of time (25 days, one month, and so on). Some badges are easier to earn than others, as there are a number of badges that can only be earned by creating quizzes and earning Curator Picks and Editor Picks. Seeing as new badges are added every Tuesday, there are now over 1,400 badges to earn, and I have only encountered one user that has earned every single badge; that being said, I hope to get there myself one day.
As you continue playing quizzes on the site, you can earn milestones for how many unique quizzes you have played. At the time I am writing this, I have played over 13,000 different quizzes since I first made my account in 2018; my next milestone is 15,000 unique quiz plays, which I will hopefully reach by the end of this year. Building up this total is not too difficult, as you can get to each of these milestones just by playing quizzes.
While the amount of quizzes you’ve played does appear on your profile page, don’t be fooled—this is simply the amount of times you’ve played a quiz in general, taking any time that you have played a quiz more than once into account. The actual total is shown under the “Plays” section, which shows you every quiz that you have played, noting all of the times that you played each quiz under the list’s “Played” category. To give you a visual, here is my profile page, and here is a list of every quiz I have played.
With each year that passes since you have initially made your account, Sporcle places you into the “[insert number here] Year Club.” I first made my account in 2018, meaning I am coming up on my seventh “Sporcleversary,” granting me membership in the Seven Year Club. In the grand scheme of things, this does not mean very much, but it will be cool to say that I have been playing these quizzes for seven years.
On your Sporcleversary, there are two different badges you can earn; to earn the “Happy Sporcleversary!” badge, all you have to do is play 10 quizzes on the anniversary of the creation of your Sporcle account. The second of these badges is called “Showdown Birthday Crown,” which has you play 10 Showdowns on your Sporcleversary. Since I was not super active on Sporcle until last year, I have not had the opportunity to earn these badges yet; that being said, I will earn them this year.
This brings me to another section of Sporcle—challenges and showdowns. Challenges involve users playing a quiz, trying to get a high score, and then challenging other users to try and beat their score; you can also challenge the Sporcle bot to quizzes, which was the only way that I played challenges for a long time. By winning a certain amount of challenges against other players or the Sporcle bot, you can earn some new badges; for example, the “Fight Club February” badge requires players to win at least one challenge on Feb. 1, two on the 2nd, and so on.
Showdowns are a little bit like challenges, although they function differently in nature. Instead of competing individually and trying to earn a high score, showdowns are live competitions against other players, where two players aim to get as many correct answers as possible before their opponent. Like with challenges, you can face off against a bot or a real player. Winning showdowns grants you more badges, like the “Showdown Flowdown” badge, which has players play at least 25 showdowns within the span of one day.
I could go on and on about this site, but I think I have said enough about it already. I love playing quizzes so much that it has become a daily ritual for me to play a few quizzes, check out what my Sporcle friends are up to, and hope to see my total quiz plays go up. At the time I am writing this, I have recently surpassed 98,000 created quiz plays, putting me very close to my goal of 100,000 by the end of this year. I want to continue playing and creating Sporcle quizzes for the foreseeable future, trying out new quizzes from different users. In case I haven’t said it already, I thoroughly enjoy this site.
Featured image by Patrick Hood on Canva.
