Sunday tournament rules
Rules in: Français · Español · Polski · Eesti · Lietuvių
Organiser
The Sunday tournament is organised by Andrei Tchernoivan, The Heights, Triq Ta’ Grunju, Qala QLA 2132, Gozo, Malta (VAT number MT33118505), contact: contact@wattsfor.ai. The organiser is its only sponsor and pays the prize.
Apple and Google are not sponsors of the tournament and are not involved in it in any way.
Who can take part
You can take part if you live in one of the eligible countries below and are 18 or older; in the United States you must also have reached the age of majority in your state (19 in Alabama and Nebraska, 21 in Mississippi). The organiser and the members of his household cannot take part.
The eligible countries are: Andorra; Australia (its states and territories, not Norfolk Island, Christmas Island or the Cocos (Keeling) Islands); Austria; Belgium; Bulgaria; Czechia; Estonia; Finland (not Åland); France (metropolitan France, including Corsica); French Guiana; Germany; Guadeloupe; Hungary; Ireland; Japan; Jersey; Latvia; Liechtenstein; Lithuania; Luxembourg; Macau; Malaysia; Malta (Malta, Gozo and Comino); Martinique; Mayotte; New Zealand (not Tokelau, the Cook Islands or Niue); Norway (not Svalbard or Jan Mayen); Poland; Réunion; Romania; Slovakia; Slovenia; Spain (including the Balearic and Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla); Sweden; Switzerland; and the United States (the 50 states and the District of Columbia, not Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands or the US Minor Outlying Islands).
A country may be closed to new entries for a time, for example while a legal check or a translation of these rules is pending; the join form then shows it as not open yet. Nothing else in these rules changes.
You must join and play on an internet connection in the country where you live, as read from your IP address by the organiser’s hosting provider, Cloudflare; for French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte and Réunion, a connection read as France also counts. Connections read as any other place, or through a VPN or relay that ends elsewhere, are refused.
When you join, you state the country where you live and, in the United States, your state, and you confirm your age and that you live there. If you win, you confirm the same when you claim the prize, and you must be able to prove it (see “Claiming the prize”).
One entry per person. Taking part with more than one device, installation or nickname disqualifies all of that person’s entries.
Free entry
Taking part is free. No purchase, subscription (including Plus), advertising, review or app download is needed: you can play in the web version at app.mnemocracy.com. Plus, or anything else that is ever sold in the app, will never give any advantage in the tournament.
When and how it is played
A tournament is held every Sunday at 8:00 pm Central European Time (CET, or CEST in summer), starting on Sunday 4 October 2026; the app also shows the time where you are. You can join from 7:45 pm until it starts, in the Mnemocracy app or its web version. Entries close when the tournament starts.
Each tournament takes a limited number of entries, overall and per internet connection; once the limit is reached, joining closes.
There are 12 multiple-choice questions, asking the year or century of events in English Wikipedia’s “On this day” lists (their events, not births, deaths or holidays) of the 7 days before that Sunday, so reading the app in English during the week prepares you. Everyone gets the same questions, in the same order, at the same moment. Each question can be answered for 8 seconds, plus your connection allowance (see “How answering time is measured”); only your first answer to each question counts.
How answering time is measured
The organiser’s server, in the European Union, measures each answer from the moment it sends the question to the moment your answer reaches it. That time includes the time the question and your answer take to travel over the internet, which is longer the further you are from the server.
To make up for this, the server measures your connection’s round-trip time itself: it sends your app short test messages when you connect (several in a row) and again after every question, and uses the lowest of your last 9 measurements. This is your connection allowance. When a question opens, your allowance is fixed for that question: it is added to the 8 seconds you have to answer, and subtracted from the answering time the server measures. The app’s countdown allows for it.
The allowance is capped according to the country you declared: at most 150 milliseconds in the European countries, 300 milliseconds in the United States, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte and Réunion, and 400 milliseconds in Australia, Japan, Macau, Malaysia and New Zealand. If your connection is read as another eligible country whose cap is lower (for example France, for a resident of Guadeloupe), that lower cap applies.
If your allowance could not be measured when a question opens, for example because your app had to send the answer without its live connection, the allowance of your previous answer is used, or none. The allowance applied to each answer is recorded. Delaying the test messages on purpose is cheating (see “Fair play”).
How the winner is decided
The winner is decided by skill alone: there is no draw and no random tie-break, and everyone plays the same questions at the same moment. Only a perfect run can win the jackpot: every question answered correctly. A question you did not answer in time counts as wrong.
If several players have a perfect run, the one with the shortest total answering time wins: for each answer, the time the server measured minus your connection allowance. Each answer counts for at least the question’s reading time (a few seconds, depending on its length), so answering faster than anyone can read gains nothing. If they are still tied, the jackpot is shared equally between them.
If nobody has a perfect run, the jackpot is not awarded that week and rolls over (see “The prize”), and the best player wins the consolation prize of US$25: the player with the most correct answers and, between equal scores, the shortest total answering time on their correct answers, counted as above. It is awarded only if at least 5 players played that week, that is, answered at least one question (not counting a removed one) and were not disqualified, and only if the best player has at least 6 correct answers. If several players have the same number of correct answers and the same total time, it is shared equally between them, each share rounded down to the cent. Everyone still sees the ranking.
If a question turns out to be wrong or ambiguous, it is removed from everyone’s score for that tournament, and a perfect run then means every remaining question answered correctly.
The organiser is the judge of the tournament. The server scores and ranks the answers automatically under these rules; you can ask the organiser to review a result, a disqualification or the loss of a prize.
The prize
The jackpot starts at US$100 and goes to a perfect run; the consolation prize is US$25 (see “How the winner is decided”). Both are paid by bank transfer in US dollars (USD transfer) from the organiser’s bank in Malta to an account in the winner’s own name (shared equally in a tie). The organiser pays all the fees for the transfer, his own bank’s and those of any intermediary banks, so that the full prize reaches the winner’s bank. Only a fee that the winner’s own bank may charge to receive the transfer, and any conversion of US dollars into the currency of the winner’s account at that bank’s rate, are outside the organiser’s control; they can reduce the amount credited to the account and are not paid by the organiser. Neither prize can be exchanged or transferred. What these rules say about the prize and the winner, including claiming, eligibility checks, payment, tax and data, applies to the consolation prize and its winner as it does to the jackpot.
Rollover: when nobody has a perfect run, US$100 is added to the next tournament’s prize, again and again, with no upper limit, until someone has a perfect run. The tournament after a win starts again at US$100. A postponed or cancelled tournament’s prize carries over unchanged. The consolation prize is paid by the organiser on top of the jackpot: it never comes out of the jackpot or reduces it; in a week when the consolation prize is awarded, the jackpot still rolls over in full; and the consolation prize itself never rolls over.
The prize at stake is shown in the app before each tournament and is fixed when its lobby opens.
The prize is paid within 30 days after the winner has claimed it and their eligibility has been checked.
Receiving the prize never depends on agreeing to any publicity. Only your nickname is ever shown, on the leaderboard, unless you agree otherwise in writing.
Claiming the prize
The winner is told in the app when the tournament ends and must claim the prize there within 14 days, giving their full name and an email address and confirming their age and their country of residence (and, in the United States, their state), which must be those given when joining.
Before paying, the organiser may ask for proof of age (such as a government photo ID) and for proof that you live in the country, and state, you declared (such as a residence document, or a bank statement or utility bill in your name at an address there, no more than 3 months old). A winner who does not claim in time, who declines the prize, or who is not eligible loses it. A jackpot lost in this way goes to the next eligible player with a perfect run; if there is none, it is added to the next prize that is not yet fixed. A consolation prize lost in this way goes to the next best eligible player with at least 6 correct answers (shared in a tie); if there is none, it is not awarded. A player who becomes a winner in this way is told in the app, on the device they played on, the next time they open the tournament, and has 14 days from becoming the winner to claim. A winner who is not eligible is disqualified, and the prizes are then decided again without them, including whether at least 5 played; a winner who only did not claim in time, or declined the prize, stays in the ranking and still counts as having played, and if they had a perfect run, no consolation prize is awarded that week.
Before paying, the organiser also checks each winner against the European Union’s sanctions lists and, because the prize is paid in US dollars, the sanctions list of the United States Treasury (OFAC); for a winner who lives in Switzerland, also the Swiss (SECO) lists. A person on one of these lists cannot be paid and is treated as not eligible.
Tax
The organiser does not deduct any tax from the prize. Depending on the law where you live, the prize may be taxable income that you must report yourself, for example in Finland, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United States, in some of them only above a threshold. You are responsible for any tax due on it.
Fair play
Using automated tools, other people’s help, several entries, a VPN or relay, or any interference with the app, the server or the measurement of your connection is not allowed. The organiser may disqualify anyone who breaks these rules, before or after a tournament, and then decides the winner again from the remaining players.
If a technical problem, an outage of Wikipedia or anything else outside the organiser’s control prevents a fair tournament, it may be postponed or cancelled; this is announced in the app.
If the organiser ends the Sunday tournaments, he announces the last one in the app at least 4 weeks before. The last tournament follows the same rules: only a perfect run wins the jackpot, and if nobody has one, the jackpot is not paid; the consolation prize is awarded as in any other week.
Your data
The organiser is responsible for the tournament’s data. He uses it to run the tournament under these rules, which are an agreement between you and him (GDPR art. 6(1)(b)), and to prevent cheating and abuse, a legitimate interest (art. 6(1)(f)). He keeps only what the tournament and its statistics need: your nickname (shown on the leaderboard), a random identifier of your installation, when you joined, which version and language of these rules you accepted, the country (and US state) you declared and, if you live in Slovakia, your agreement to receive the rules in English; your answers, answering times, connection allowances, score and rank; and, if you are disqualified or lose a prize, that decision and its reason. With your entry, a code derived from your network address (not the address itself) is kept to limit entries per connection. These are deleted 90 days after the tournament. With your entry, a second code derived from your installation’s identifier, the same in every tournament, is kept so that the organiser can count how many players return; it is deleted with the entry. The organiser also uses this data to compile statistics about the tournament, such as how many played, how many answered each question correctly and which countries players come from; only totals are kept after the 90 days, they are published without nicknames, and groups of fewer than 5 players are never shown separately (a legitimate interest, art. 6(1)(f)). Your IP address, and the country it is read as, are used to check that you connect from the country you declared and to cap your connection allowance, and are not stored. You need a nickname to take part.
For a winner, the organiser also keeps the full name, email address and country (and US state) given to claim the prize, and the amount and date of the payment. He asks by email, never in the app, for the bank details for the transfer and for any proof of eligibility needed. Without these the prize cannot be paid. The tournament server deletes the name and email one year after payment, together with the country and state, and proof of eligibility is deleted once it has been checked. The record of the payment itself (payee, account, amount and date) stays in the organiser’s bank and accounting records for as long as the law requires.
The tournament’s data is stored in the European Union. Your connection reaches it through Cloudflare’s network, which may handle it in a data centre in or near your own country. To pay a winner, their name and account details go to the organiser’s bank in Malta, to the banks that route a US-dollar transfer, which may be outside the European Economic Area, including in the United States, and to the winner’s own bank, wherever it is; this is necessary to pay the prize under these rules (GDPR art. 49(1)(b)).
You can ask to see, correct or delete your data, to restrict or object to its use, or for a copy of it, by writing to contact@wattsfor.ai. You can also complain to Malta’s Information and Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC) or to the data-protection authority of the country where you live. The privacy notice at mnemocracy.com/privacy says more, including for players in Japan and New Zealand.
Law, language and questions
These rules are governed by the law of Malta. This choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of the country where you live.
Questions and complaints go first to contact@wattsfor.ai. You may write in English or in the language of any translation of these rules, and the organiser answers in the same language. You may also contact the Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority (MCCAA) or the consumer authority of the country where you live.
These rules are also published in French, Spanish, Polish, Estonian and Lithuanian, in the app and at mnemocracy.com/rules. The English version prevails unless the law of your country requires otherwise.
The organiser may change these rules only for future tournaments. He announces a change in the app before it applies, and you are asked to accept the new version before you next join. A change never reduces a jackpot already built up.
Country-specific terms
Slovakia: when you join, you agree to receive these rules and all information about the tournament in English, which you understand.
United States: you confirm your state of residence when you join and when you claim, and that you have reached its age of majority. The organiser may ask a US winner for a government photo ID and a proof of address in that state. The prize is paid by bank transfer from the organiser’s bank in Malta to a US bank account in the winner’s own name. It is taxable income in the United States, which you are responsible for reporting; the organiser does not withhold tax.