5 Quick Tips to Crush General Knowledge Quizzes
5 May 2026 · 5 min read
Quizzes test more than just memory — they test how you reason about uncertain information. Below are five techniques that consistently raise quiz scores, whether you're playing for points on Thinq Magic or competing in a pub quiz.
1. Read every option before deciding
Speed-readers love to lock in the first plausible answer. Don't. On multiple choice questions, the second option is often a deliberate distractor, and the correct answer is hiding at position three or four. Forcing yourself to read all four options before picking takes two extra seconds and adds 5–10 percentage points to your accuracy.
2. Use the "absurdity filter"
Most quiz writers include one obviously wrong option to make the question approachable. Eliminate it first. Now you're picking from three. If you can spot one more that's clearly out of period, region, or scale, you're at 50/50 — way better odds than a blind guess.
3. Anchor on what you do know
For a question like "What is the chemical formula for water?", you don't need to remember chemistry class. You know:
- It has hydrogen and oxygen.
- It has more hydrogen than oxygen (two H atoms per molecule).
That's enough to lock in H2O even if the formula has slipped your mind. Anchor questions to one fact you're sure of and let the rest follow.
4. Trust the first instinct on familiar topics
Counter-intuitively, on topics you know well (your hobby, your subject, your city), your first answer is right more often than your second-guessed answer. Save the deliberation for genuinely unfamiliar territory.
5. Practise spaced repetition for facts that bite
If you keep missing the same categories — Indian rivers, Booker Prize winners, periodic table elements — spend five minutes a day on a spaced-repetition app like Anki. It's the highest-ROI study technique ever measured, and you'll see results in two weeks.
Bonus: the Thinq Magic quiz specifically
Our quiz pulls from a pool of general knowledge questions covering geography, history, science, literature, and current affairs. Each round shows you 5 randomly selected questions, and each correct answer is worth 5 points (25 total). The questions don't repeat within a session, so brute-force memorisation doesn't help — but the techniques above absolutely do.
Aim for 4 out of 5 consistently and you'll hit your daily quiz cap in under three minutes.