Tournament Rules
Daily / Monthly / Yearly championships. All times Central Standard Time (UTC-06:00, no DST drift).
1. Account requirement
All Tournament submissions require a QXR Software account. Casual mode is playable without an account; only Tournament results count toward the daily / monthly / yearly ladders.
Your display name on the leaderboard is the one tied to your QXR account. Update it in your account settings if you'd like something different on the board.
2. Attempt limits: cooldown and weekly cap
- 1-hour cooldown between Tournament attempts.
- Maximum 3 Tournament attempts per week, counted from Sunday 6:00 AM CST through the following Sunday 5:59 AM CST.
- Casual mode and the free Daily Challenge do not count toward either limit.
- Submissions outside these limits are rejected with a 429 status; the menu surfaces the remaining cooldown before you can start.
3. Daily Challenge (free, no account)
One brutal question per day for everyone. The puzzle rotates automatically at 12:00 AM CST (midnight) from the published question bank. No manual schedule is required on the server.
- Share link: /hardestSimpsons/daily.html (or /hardestSimpsons/daily).
- Light bot gate at the landing page (honeypot + timing); no hCaptcha on every visit.
- One attempt per browser per day; streaks are tracked locally (Wordle-style).
- Does not require a QXR account and does not use Tournament attempt slots.
3b. Casual mode (free, optional sign-in)
5 questions · bonus question on perfect. Five random picks from the human-sanitized casual pool, once per 24-hour CST day (resets at midnight CST). Three lives: three wrong answers end the run.
- Bonus question: answer all five main questions correctly with a combined main-phase time under 55 seconds to unlock a sixth question drawn from the final boss pool (
casual_finalq_01.json). - Bonus scoring: the sixth question uses a 15× score multiplier.
- Stats: unlike Daily, we do not store which questions you saw. We only store how many you got correct, your total score, and points earned per question.
- Signed-in players keep a local record of highest score and best run on this device.
- We are expanding the casual question pool so more attempts per day can be offered later.
3c. Grab Bag (free, mobile + desktop)
5 questions · bonus question on perfect. Five random questions sampled from every side-game mode pool except Tournament. No lives fail-out: you always play all five main questions.
- Bonus question: answer all five main questions correctly to unlock a sixth question. For now the bonus is drawn from the same final pool as Casual (
casual_finalq_01.json) until a dedicated Grab Bag final shard is added. - Shares the side-game 24-hour CST cooldown with Warm Up, featured side games, and other mode cards.
- Mutators are disabled in Grab Bag.
4. Daily Tournament
The daily Tournament window opens at 12:00 AM CST (midnight) (06:00 UTC) and runs for 24 hours. Your highest score within that window is your daily entry.
- One winner per daily window. Highest score wins; ties are broken by earliest submission.
- Daily winners are automatically qualified for the next Monthly Tournament.
- An e-mail link is sent to qualified players from the QXR mail relay (Resend).
- Once you win a daily, you can still play dailies, but your scores are not eligible to win another daily until the current month's Monthly Tournament closes.
5. Monthly Tournament
The monthly ladder runs for the full calendar month in CST: midnight on the 1st through 11:59 PM on the last day. Your highest Tournament score in that window is your monthly entry.
- Eligibility for monthly recognition: every player who won at least one daily that month.
- Email invitations are queued automatically for eligible players (cron on CR-WEB1).
- One monthly winner is recorded when the month closes.
- Monthly winners cannot win another monthly or daily until the Yearly closes. They can keep playing.
6. Yearly Tournament
The tournament year resets every August 29 at 6:00 AM CST. Questions are drawn from the entire bank, weighted toward d-, e-, and f-class only.
- Eligibility: every player who won a monthly that year.
- Email invitations are sent the day before.
- One yearly winner is crowned. The trophy is awarded by QXR Software (we'll figure out the trophy).
- Yearly winners are unlocked again at the next yearly reset.
7. Lockout summary
| If you won… | You CAN play | You CANNOT win until… |
|---|---|---|
| A daily | Dailies (and monthly if invited) | The current month's Monthly closes |
| A monthly | Dailies (and yearly if invited) | The current year's Yearly closes (Aug 29, 6:00 AM CST) |
| The yearly | Everything in the next tournament year | The next yearly reset |
8. Anti-cheat & fairness
- Every submission is plausibility-checked server-side: score must be reachable from the questions answered, max-streak must not exceed questions answered, time must be in range.
- IP addresses are hashed before storage; no raw IPs are kept.
- Multiple accounts per person to bypass the 3-per-week cap is grounds for disqualification.
- Anomalous patterns may be reviewed by QXR; in disputed cases the QXR team's decision is final.
9. Money & legal
- This game costs nothing and will never cost anything. If you paid for access, you were scammed. Not by us.
- Hardest Ever is an unofficial fan project. It is not licensed, sponsored, or endorsed by Fox, Disney, or anyone associated with The Simpsons. All visuals are AI-generated.
- By submitting a score you grant QXR Software a non-exclusive right to display your QXR display name on the leaderboard and in announcement emails about the tournament you've qualified for.
- You can request removal of your scores at any time through your account page or the contact form.