The First Ten Questions of The Impossible Quiz, and What They Teach You

Most people lose their first run of The Impossible Quiz somewhere before question ten, and they lose it the same way: by treating it as a quiz. The first ten questions are Splapp-me-do teaching you not to. Each one introduces a kind of trick that comes back, harder, later in the game. Here is what they are doing.

Question 1: How many holes in a polo?

The answer is four. Not the mint — the shirt: a neck, a hem and two sleeves. Lesson one: the word you assume is the wrong word. The quiz will do this to you constantly, and it is British, so 'polo' and 'torch' mean what they mean in Britain.

Question 2: Can a match box?

No, but a tin can. Lesson two: puns are answers. If a box reads like a joke, it is probably the one.

Question 3: Answer this question backwards

Click K.O. The box says 'O.K.', read backwards. The question is not asking you to think backwards; it is telling you which box to click.

Question 4: Click the answer

Click the words 'the answer' in the question itself. This is the first time the boxes are a decoy and the question is the interface. From here on, if none of the four boxes looks right, look at the question text, the number, the lives counter — anything on screen can be a button.

Question 5: Put the mouse on here

The first maze. You have to move the cursor from the left dot to the right dot without touching the walls, and the direct route is blocked. Go around the outside of the maze, along the edge of the play area, slowly. You have no skips yet at this point — they are handed out later — but when you do get them, keep them: question 110 needs all seven, and spending one in the middle is the most common way a run is lost without the player knowing it.

Questions 6 to 10

The next five keep mixing the styles: a spelling question, a question whose answer is 'an elephant', a question that asks what the answer to question 2 was, and a pun. The habit they build is the one that carries you to the end: read the whole screen before you click anything. Look at the four boxes, then the question wording, then the picture, then the counter. The right move is somewhere in that list.

Why it matters

There is no save. When you die, you go back to question 1, so those ten questions get played dozens of times by anyone who finishes. Treat them as a warm-up you can do in thirty seconds and the rest of the quiz stops feeling unfair — it becomes a sequence you learn, one question per run.