Plain Game Data Sources

Plain Game builds every question from open data, never from another game's answer lists. This page lists each dataset behind the game, its licence, how many entries it holds and when it was last refreshed.

Datasets by Category

Each category uses one source, so every value in a round is measured the same way.

How Values Are Chosen

• Country figures use the most recent year the World Bank reports for each country, limited to sovereign states.
• For Wikidata entries we take the value marked as preferred. When there is no preferred value we use the median of the listed values, which avoids outdated or outlying figures.
• Questions only use well-known entries, ranked by how many Wikipedia language editions cover them, so you are asked about places and things people have heard of.
• Targets in naming rounds are rounded to two significant figures, the way people usually talk about big numbers.

Known Limits

Real-world numbers are rarely as tidy as a quiz needs. Building heights depend on whether a spire counts, city populations depend on where the boundary is drawn, and river lengths vary between surveys. A few famous peaks are missing because of how they are classified on Wikidata. We refresh the data regularly and fix problems as players report them.

Licences and Attribution

World Bank data is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Wikidata content is in the public domain under CC0 1.0. Each Plain Game result card also names the source of its numbers. Read more about Plain Game.