Difficulty
HexQuiz runs five levels, and they are defined by who could answer the question rather than by how obscure it sounds. Every one of the 174 categories is written at all five, so a subject can be played gently or seriously without leaving it.
The five levels
| 1 — Beginner | Common knowledge. A gentle start |
|---|---|
| 2 — Intermediate | Solid general knowledge required |
| 3 — Advanced | For players who know their subject |
| 4 — Expert | Detailed knowledge and sharp recall |
| 5 — Genius | The hardest questions we have |
Who each level is written for
Behind those names is a reference solver — the person a question at that level should be answerable by. It is what keeps a level meaning the same thing in Ancient Worlds as it does in Formula Racing.
| Beginner | A child of eight to twelve |
|---|---|
| Intermediate | A teenager, twelve to sixteen |
| Advanced | The average adult — the general public |
| Expert | A pub quizzer: broad trivia across many subjects, no specialism |
| Genius | A specialist in this particular subject |
Expert and Genius differ in kind, not degree
The step from level 4 to level 5 is the one worth understanding, because it is not simply "harder". Expert rewards breadth: the person who reads widely, retains a great deal and recognises things across many fields. Genius rewards depth: it assumes you know this subject, and it does not care whether you know anything else.
A strong general quizzer can clear Expert in almost any category. Genius is where the category stops being general knowledge and starts being a specialism — and where somebody who only plays one subject can beat somebody who plays all of them.
How a level opens
Difficulty is not a global setting. It is tracked per category: a difficulty becomes available in a category once that same category holds a medal one level below it. Level 1 is always open.
So a gold medal in Motorsport opens Expert in Motorsport and nothing else. Depth is earned where it is shown, which means your profile ends up describing what you actually know rather than how long you have played.
Training is the exception, and deliberately so: there every level is open from the start, because its purpose is practice rather than progress.
Difficulty and clues
The two are linked by design. At the lower levels clues are a convenience — a way to save time or settle a doubt. At Expert and Genius they are the mechanism by which a question becomes answerable at all, and the points they cost are the price of reaching a rung you could not have reached unaided. On the clue system page there is more on what each tier gives you.
What a difficulty level is not
It is not a measure of how rare a fact is. A question can be about something widely known and still sit high, because what it asks for is a relationship, an order or a quantity rather than a name. The sorting and estimation formats in particular climb through precision, not obscurity.
After release
As categories are added they arrive written at all five levels, so the difficulty ladder extends with the library rather than lagging behind it.