How to play Never Heard of It
Mortimer is an owl with a monocle who claims to have heard of everything. Each round he gives you five easy questions, such as Name a fruit or Name a chemical element. Any true answer counts, but the obvious ones bore him. Type the least obvious answer you can think of and he stamps it with a verdict.
OBVIOUSLY scores 1 point, HEARD OF IT scores 5, HM. NOT BAD scores 12 and NEVER HEARD OF IT scores 20, so a perfect round is 100. Name a banana and he yawns. Name a salak and his monocle falls off.
There is no timer. If your answer is not on his list you lose nothing and can try again. If you are sure it is real, you can insist: it counts for 5 points, marked as unverified. You can also pass on the question for 0 points. After each answer he shows you a few rare answers you could have given.
A free game like Krillion
If you came here looking for a Krillion style game, this is the same kind of idea: rarer true answers score more. Never Heard of It is our own game, with its own questions, scoring and owl. It is not made by or connected with Krillion. To learn how that game works, read our [Krillion guide](/trending/krillion).
The two play differently. Krillion gives you 25 seconds a prompt, and when we played its Unlimited mode the second run asked for a one-time $5 unlock. Here there is no clock, and you can play as many rounds as you like for free. Krillion also has rarity data behind it that we do not have, so its scores and ours mean different things.
Where the scores come from
There are 100 questions. Our editors wrote about 4,500 answers by hand and placed each in one of four levels, then checked for obvious mistakes against Wikipedia page views. For open questions like dog breeds and rivers, we added about 2,900 more accepted answers, mostly from Wikidata, and scored most of those by how many Wikipedia language editions cover them. That makes rarity an informed estimate, not a measurement of what players actually type. Some questions, like the US states and the chemical elements, list every possible answer. Others, like birds and cheeses, can only list some, so a true answer can still be missing.
Small spelling slips on longer words are forgiven, and the game tells you when it has corrected one. Capital letters, accents and plurals do not matter.
Today's five and endless rounds
Today's five gives everyone the same questions on the same day, and you can share your score as a row of coloured squares that gives away no answers. Endless rounds deal questions you have not seen yet, and when you have seen all 100, they come round again.
Tips for a higher score
Skip the first three answers that come to mind. Other people think of those too.
Use what you know from elsewhere. A trip abroad, a hobby or an old school subject is often worth more than general knowledge. Bakers know breads and sailors know boats.
Learn from the verdict page. The rare answers Mortimer shows are real and they stick, so your next run through those questions should score better.
Pick answers you can spell. A very rare answer is no use if it is too far from the right spelling to be recognised.
