How to get better at trivia

Ten habits for rarer answers

1. Skip your first thought. Whatever comes to mind first comes to everyone’s mind first. For “Name a fruit”, that is Apple, Banana, Orange and Strawberry: right, but worth only 10 points. Take a breath and go for the second idea.
2. Run through the alphabet. Letters jog the memory. For “Name a fruit”, more answers start with P than with any other letter, then B and S. Each prompt page shows its own most common first letters.
3. Travel. Think of one place at a time: a country you visited, a market, a restaurant. Food, animals and names are very different on the other side of the world, and the answers from far away are usually the rare ones.
4. Change the decade. For films, songs, toys or inventions, picture a different time: your grandparents’ era, the 1980s, last year. Old answers are rarer than new ones.
5. Split the category. “Name a mammal” is easier when you think of sea mammals, then desert ones, then pets, then the ones in a zoo. Below the obvious Dog, Cat and Lion, the next layer already has Tiger, Horse and Cow.
6. Use what only you know. Your job, your hobby and your home town are full of answers other people never think of. For “Name a job or profession”, everyone says teacher; the job of someone you know may be much deeper.
7. Guess freely. In Icillion a wrong guess costs 2 seconds, not the prompt. Spelling slips, accents and plurals are forgiven, so type what you think and keep going.
8. Watch the clock, not the score. Twenty seconds is enough for two or three tries. If nothing rare comes after ten seconds, take a safe answer: a shallow dive beats no dive.
9. Read the lists afterwards. At the end of every round, each prompt opens to show all its answers. Five minutes of reading teaches you more than an hour of guessing.
10. Play with friends. In Seal Circle every answer can only be said once, so the obvious ones are gone within a turn or two. Nothing trains you to dig deeper faster.

See it on one prompt

“Name a fruit” accepts 129 answers. Here are the two levels everyone can see:

The tip

• Apple
• Banana
• Orange
• Strawberry
• Grape

Below the surface

• Pear
• Cherry
• Mango
• Pineapple
• Watermelon
• Peach
• Kiwi
• Lemon
• Blueberry
• Raspberry
• Plum
• Lime

Everything under these, 110 answers in all, is where the points are. How deep “Name a fruit” goes.

Questions

Is there a trick to getting better at trivia?

Practice past the obvious. Most people stop at the first answer that comes to mind; going through the alphabet, places and time periods finds the ones further down.

Do typos count in Icillion?

Small typos, capital letters, accents and plurals don’t matter, and common alternative names count. A wrong guess only costs 2 seconds, so it pays to try.

How can I learn more answers?

After every round, open each prompt in your results to see all its answers, level by level. Reading a few lists is the fastest way to grow your own.