Outrank is a higher-or-lower game built on real reference data. Each round shows two things and asks which one is greater — more calories, more sugar, more protein, further to fly. You pick, both numbers are revealed, and you move on. Ten rounds, about ninety seconds.

The reason it is more interesting than it sounds is that human intuition about magnitude is reliably terrible. Almost everybody knows that a doughnut has more sugar than a cucumber. Almost nobody can say whether half an hour of vigorous gardening burns more than half an hour of swimming, or whether Frankfurt or Boston is further from Cancún. Those are the rounds that decide your score, and they are deliberately saved for the end.

How a round works

Two cards appear with the question above them. Tap the one you think has the higher number. Both values count up on screen straight away, the winner is marked ▲ higher and the other ▽ lower, and after a beat the next round loads. There is no timer pressure and no way to lose early — you always play all ten.

Scoring and streaks

One point per correct answer, out of ten. Consecutive correct answers build a streak multiplier, which does not change your score but does change the sound: each correct answer in a row plays one semitone higher than the last. People chase the sound more than the number.

Rounds are ordered from easiest to hardest by the ratio between the two values. Round one is usually a landslide. By round nine or ten the two answers are often within a few percent of each other, and those are flagged in your shared result as coin flips — so your friends know which one to argue about.

Human intuition about magnitude is reliably terrible.

Where the numbers come from

Nothing here is invented or estimated by us. The categories are drawn from public-domain reference datasets:

  • Calories burned — the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, converted to kilocalories for thirty minutes of activity at a 75 kg body weight.
  • Food energy, sugar and protein — the USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy release, per 100 g, as published.
  • Distance — great-circle distance between airports, calculated from OurAirports coordinates.

Those are the same datasets behind our reference sites, which is where to go if you want the underlying tables rather than the game.

Playing against someone

The result screen builds a challenge link containing the same ten questions in the same order, plus your score. Send it to somebody confident. They play the identical set and see the head-to-head at the end.