Build a quiz with AI that people want to finish
Most quizzes lose people around the third question, not because the questions are hard but because nothing rewards carrying on. A good one paces its questions, explains each answer and ends on a result that means something. Anticode builds the whole quiz as one small app; this page covers the design choices that matter and what the quiz can and can't do.
What separates a good quiz from a list of questions
A quiz is a short game with an argument behind it. The questions build towards something, and the player should feel they learned or discovered a thing by the end. Three design decisions do most of the work:
- Order
- Open with a question nearly everyone gets right, so the first interaction feels good. Put the hardest questions in the middle third, and end on one that's interesting rather than brutal.
- Feedback
- Tell the player after each question whether they were right and, in one sentence, why. That sentence is what makes a quiz worth sharing; a bare tick or cross teaches nothing.
- The result
- A score alone is flat. Pair it with a band ("Seasoned navigator", "Still finding north") and a line about what separates that band from the next, so the number has a meaning.
Writing the questions
Multiple-choice questions fail in predictable ways. Watch for these when you draft, or when you review what the model drafts for you:
- Give-away options. If one answer is much longer or more precise than the rest, players pick it without knowing. Keep options parallel in length and form.
- Joke distractors. One silly option in four turns the question into a three-way guess. Every wrong answer should be something a reasonable person might believe.
- "All of the above". It rewards test-taking tricks rather than knowledge. Avoid it.
- Ambiguous facts. If an answer depends on a date or a definition, state it in the question.
- Too many questions. For a casual quiz, eight to twelve is plenty. Longer is fine for revision or training, if the player can see how far through they are.
How to ask Anticode for it
You can supply your own questions, which is best when accuracy matters, or ask for a draft set on a topic and correct it. A useful request names the audience, the number of questions, the feedback style and the result bands: "A ten-question quiz on British birds for keen beginners. Four options each, a one-line explanation after every answer, a progress bar, and three result bands with names. Keep the best score."
The Architect shows a short plan and may ask a question or two, such as whether questions should be shuffled or whether there's a timer. The model then writes the quiz as one HTML, CSS and JavaScript document: question screens, answer states, keyboard support and a results screen, all in one page that works on a phone. If the model drafts the questions, check every answer yourself before you publish. It writes plausible questions quickly, and a quiz with one wrong answer loses the player's trust in the rest.
Options worth deciding up front
- Shuffle questions and options each play, or keep a fixed order for a designed difficulty curve.
- A per-question timer, or none (timers suit trivia, not learning).
- Show the right answer after a wrong pick, or let the player retry.
- A review screen at the end listing every question and the player's choice.
Where scores and answers live
Anticode apps run in a sandbox with no network connection, so the quiz never sends a player's answers anywhere. Scores, best results and progress can be saved in the player's own browser, so someone who comes back next week sees their previous best on that device. Nobody else, including you, can see it. For a fun or learning quiz that's a feature: you can tell players plainly that their answers stay on their device.
It also means some things common in quiz platforms aren't possible here: a leaderboard shared between players, a class teacher viewing every pupil's results, or a quiz that checks answers on a server so they can't be read in the page code. If you need those, a dedicated quiz or learning platform is the right tool. If what you want is to collect an email in exchange for a fuller result, that's a different design: see the lead generation quiz page, which uses Anticode's form pipeline to send the address to you.
Other limits
- No outside media. The sandbox blocks images and audio from other sites, so pictures in questions are drawn in code (SVG, canvas) or added to the build as your own photos, rather than loaded from the web.
- Answers are in the page. Anyone who opens the source can find them. Don't use this for exams that matter.
- English only. The builder and the apps it writes are in English today, and there's no automatic translation of a quiz.
Questions people ask
Can the AI quiz maker write the questions for me?
Yes, describe the topic and level and it drafts a set. Treat it as a draft and check every answer, especially dates, numbers and names.
Can I see how many people took the quiz?
Published sites have page views per day in the dashboard. Individual answers and scores stay on each player's device.
Can players share their result?
The result screen can include a share line and a link to the quiz. There's no generated image or social card per result.
Can I edit questions after publishing?
Ask for the change in words, such as "replace question 4 with this one", and the quiz is updated. Recent versions are kept in history, so you can go back.