Estimate It
Guess the size of real-world things, from mountains to moons. You are scored by how close you get in orders of magnitude. Five new questions every day.
How to play
- Each question asks for a number, such as the height of Mount Everest in metres. Type your best guess and press Lock in.
- You score up to 100 points per question. An exact answer is 100, being ten times too high or too low is 50, and being a hundred times off scores zero.
- After each answer the true figure is revealed with a short fact, then you move on to the next of five questions.
- Your total out of 500 earns a grade, and you can share it without spoiling the answers.
Tips and strategy
- Think in powers of ten first. Deciding between thousands and millions matters far more than the exact digits.
- Anchor on something you know. If you know a car is about four metres long, you can scale up to a football pitch or a ship.
- Pay attention to the unit in each question. Kilometres, metres and miles are easy to mix up.
- You can type numbers with commas or in scientific form, such as 3e8.
FAQ
- Why is the score based on orders of magnitude?
- Guessing 900 when the answer is 1,000 is a good estimate, and so is 9 million for 10 million. Scoring by ratio treats both fairly, whatever the size of the number.
- Are the answers exact?
- They are rounded, well-known figures from reference sources. Where a value varies, the question says which figure is used.
- Do I get the same questions as everyone else?
- Yes. The five daily questions change at 00:00 UTC and are the same for all players.