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Question Quality and Corrections

Published by Trivia Tussle · Created by Matt Leikam

Last updated:

A good trivia question has one intended answer, enough context to understand what is being asked, plausible choices, and an explanation that teaches more than the answer label. Trivia Tussle uses automated checks to find risks, but a warning is a review prompt—not permission to publish automatically.

Selection and Source Checks

Public samples are selected individually from a reviewed pool. The working record keeps the question, answer, explanation, category, difficulty, source title, source URL, source-check date, review status, and publication status. Time-sensitive facts require a newer check or are excluded.

Who Publishes and What Automation Does

Trivia Tussle is a game created by Matt Leikam. The public question samples include explanations, sources, and source-check dates so players can inspect the supporting evidence. Creator attribution does not certify personal review of every question or imply specialist qualifications.

Automated validation checks required fields, publication state, source-check dates, exact duplicates, and near-duplicate signals. Those checks can organize or flag a record, but they do not prove a claim. Any automation or AI-assisted drafting is subject to the same sourcing and publication gates and is not treated as an authoritative source.

Duplicates and Near-Duplicates

A validator normalizes prompts and answer sets to flag exact duplicates and close wording. Similarity does not always mean two questions are identical, so flagged pairs enter an editorial queue. Unresolved pairs are not used as public samples.

Ambiguity and Answer Fit

Review asks whether two choices could be defended, whether the period or region is clear, and whether words such as first, largest, current, or most need a date or qualifier. The fix may be a clearer prompt, a different choice set, a source update, or retirement.

Difficulty Labels

Easy questions use broad recognition. Medium questions connect two familiar facts or apply a rule. Hard questions use specific but still fair context. Difficulty is calibrated within a category; it is not a claim that every player will experience the item the same way.

Corrections and Retirement

A confirmed factual error is corrected at the source record and rechecked before reuse. An outdated or irreparably ambiguous item is retired. Existing result records may retain the historical question snapshot so a completed game does not silently change after the fact.

Report a Question

Email contacttriviatussle@gmail.com with the category, exact prompt, choices, and why the answer may be wrong or unclear. A link to a reliable source is helpful. Do not send private account credentials.

Source Selection Standard

Match the claim to the source
Question subjectPreferred source typeExample
Sports ruleGoverning rulebookIFAB Laws of the Game for association-football player limits.
Document or amendment dateArchive holding the primary recordU.S. National Archives for founding documents.
Scientific processResponsible science agency or research institutionNASA or USGS educational material tied to the process.
Food-safety thresholdResponsible regulatorFDA safe-handling guidance.

A Complete Ambiguity Example

Draft: “When was the Declaration of Independence signed?” The wording merges adoption with individual signatures. Revision: “On what date did the Continental Congress adopt the Declaration of Independence?” Answer: July 4, 1776. The revised verb matches the event supported by the National Archives source.

The repair examples above show how missing dates, metrics, jurisdictions, and answer types can change a draft from broad to defensible.

Correction and Retirement Records

A correction record should identify the old wording, new wording or retirement status, specific reason, supporting source, and effective date. It should not claim a post-publication incident unless that history is verified. The examples on this page are clearly labeled pre-publication decisions; a future public incident log must distinguish those from changes made after release.