The specificity ladder
Updated
The most reliable way to find a rare answer is to stop searching the whole category. Big categories pull you toward their famous members. Small corners of a category are quiet, and the answers in them are still correct.
How the ladder works
Picture the category as a ladder. The top rung is the broad prompt. Each step down adds one restriction, until you reach a corner small enough to search properly.
Example: “Name a cheese”
- Cheese → Cheddar, Brie, Mozzarella (everyone is here)
- Cheese from one country → Italy: Parmesan, Gorgonzola, Pecorino
- One region of that country → Northern Italy: Taleggio, Fontina, Asiago
- One style → washed-rind cheeses: Taleggio, Époisses, Limburger
By the third rung you are typing answers that are clearly cheeses but rarely the first one anyone thinks of.
Good ways to add a restriction
- Place: country, region, city, continent.
- Time: decade, era, “before 1950”, “retired” or “defunct”.
- Type or shape: the physical form, colour, material or size.
- Use: what it is for, who uses it, where you would find it.
- Connection: a person, a film, a team, a holiday, a recipe.
Don’t fall off the ladder
Go one or two rungs too far and you reach answers that are so obscure they might not be on the answer list, or answers you can’t spell. Stop at the rung where you still have two or three answers you are sure about, then pick the least obvious of those.
Practise on these prompts
The ladder works on almost anything. Try it on Name a pasta shape (by region, by shape, by sauce) or Name a volcano (by country, by ocean, by famous eruption). Then compare your answers with the tiers on each page.
Related: think past the first answer and safe vs. rare answers.