Yes, every idiom and meaning you see when you play Idiom Quiz is sourced from real dictionaries, and the verification happens before the card ever reaches your browser. The current set covers five fixed expressions: break the ice, a piece of cake, spill the beans, under the weather, and hit the nail on the head. Each one is checked on Cambridge Dictionary as the primary source and independently cross-checked on its accessible Wiktionary entry, so every card carries a two-source citation chain rather than a memory recall. All ten dictionary pages used as evidence returned HTTP 200 during implementation, which is why none of the cards rely on a single reference. Two more candidates, Merriam-Webster and Collins, were tested as additional cross-checks but returned HTTP 403 in the build environment, so the contract records that result and excludes them. Because the sourcing is anchored to live dictionary content, the conventional wording and the conventional figurative meaning on each card trace back to a published reference page you can open yourself.
Where Each Idiom Comes From
The sourcing pipeline treats each expression as a small fact-checking project rather than a memory exercise. The process starts with a primary verification on Cambridge Dictionary and ends with an independent cross-check on Wiktionary. Both pages must load successfully and confirm the same conventional form and conventional figurative meaning. The contract specifies that all ten HTTPS pages returned HTTP 200 during implementation, which is why every expression in the current five-card set carries an unbroken two-source citation chain.
The verification is granular. Break the ice is checked as a single fixed phrase rather than as two loose words, and the same standard applies to hit the nail on the head, which includes one preposition and two definite articles. The card authors treat each expression as opaque to paraphrase so that the conventional wording cannot drift into a near-miss. This matters because the wrong-answer choices are designed to look plausible while still failing the dictionary test, and that test only stays honest if the source pages themselves remain the anchor.
The Five Expressions and Their Source Pages
The current set covers five English idioms. Three of them appear as completion cards, where you fill in the missing word inside an established phrase. Two of them appear as meaning cards, where you choose the conventional figurative sense from four plausible options. Each entry sits on the same two-source citation chain described above, so the card type never weakens the sourcing.
| Expression | Card Type | Primary Source | Cross-check |
|---|---|---|---|
| break the ice | Missing word | Cambridge — break the ice | Wiktionary — break the ice |
| a piece of cake | Meaning | Cambridge — piece of cake | Wiktionary — piece of cake |
| spill the beans | Missing word | Cambridge — spill the beans | Wiktionary — spill the beans |
| under the weather | Meaning | Cambridge — under the weather | Wiktionary — under the weather |
| hit the nail on the head | Missing word | Cambridge — hit the nail on the head | Wiktionary — hit the nail on the head |
You can open the Cambridge entries for break the ice or hit the nail on the head in a new tab and confirm the wording the quiz treats as conventional. The two completion-style entries that begin with a verb and a definite article, break the ice and hit the nail on the head, sit alongside one shorter completion entry, spill the beans, which still requires the exact noun beans. The two meaning-style entries, a piece of cake and under the weather, round out the five.
How Sourcing Shapes the Wrong-Answer Choices
Sourcing does more than confirm the right answer; it also constrains the wrong answers. Each incorrect option is calibrated to fail the dictionary check in a recognisable way. The completion cards distinguish exact conventional wording from plausible but incorrect combinations. Break the ice does not become break the glass or break the snow. Spill the beans uses beans rather than seeds, peas, or rice. Hit the nail on the head ends with head rather than wall, board, or point. Those substitutions are designed to be tempting so that the quiz tests dictionary knowledge rather than random guesswork.
The meaning cards make a parallel distinction between figurative use and literal-looking distractors. A piece of cake means something very easy to do, and the wrong answers describe a literal dessert, a portion of food, or a similar surface-level reading. Under the weather means feeling slightly ill, and the wrong answers cover working outdoors, feeling uncertain, and arriving late. Because every meaning is anchored to the dictionary page, none of those distractors can drift into the conventional sense without breaking the source. If you want to confirm a card before submitting, the Cambridge entry will tell you the conventional sense in a single lookup.
How to Play the Sourced Idiom Quiz
The quiz uses the same four-choice interaction for every card, regardless of whether it asks for a missing word or a figurative meaning. Follow these steps to complete a full sourced run.
- Open Idiom Quiz in your browser and wait for the first card to render. The score panel reads zero and the first expression is shown without any answer marker in the markup.
- Read the card carefully and decide whether it asks for a missing word inside a fixed phrase or for the conventional figurative meaning of a phrase. Three of the five cards ask for a missing word, and two of them ask for a figurative meaning.
- Select one of the four neutral answer options using touch, pointer, number keys 1 through 4, or the arrow keys followed by Space. The current selection is shown through a neutral selection state with no correct marker, hidden explanation, or answer data attribute.
- Press Submit answer or Enter to grade. A correct response awards 200 points, immediately advances to the next card, and may show a short review note for the previous idiom.
- Continue through all five dictionary-checked cards. Completing all five rounds correctly produces an exact final score of 1,000 points, with each correct card contributing exactly 200.
If you submit the same wrong choice twice, the repeated round-and-option signature is deduplicated, so a double click does not consume the run. A second distinct wrong choice ends the run until you press Restart, which returns you to the first card with zero score and no stored errors. Wrong submissions never reveal the correct choice, so the only way to learn an answer is to consult a real dictionary yourself.
What the Quiz Does Not Mark in the Page
The sourcing data is intentionally invisible during play. The choices carry neutral labels and a neutral selection state; there is no answer data attribute, hidden explanation, correct class, or answer-bearing ARIA description in the markup. For a completion card, the meaning of the idiom is not rendered before submission. For a meaning card, all four meanings appear as choices, but none is identified as correct before you grade.
This design means the sourcing cannot leak through DevTools inspection or accessibility tooling. A reader who views the source or listens to a screen reader hears the same neutral labels the rest of the page presents. The runtime grader is a pure reducer that compares only the selected option index against the dictionary-anchored fixture, so the mark of correctness lives in the scoring step rather than in the page itself. The only place an answer is exposed is in the optional post-submission review note for a correct response.
Sources That Could Not Be Included
The pipeline also records which sources were considered and rejected. Merriam-Webster and Collins were evaluated as possible cross-checks but returned HTTP 403 in the build environment, so they were not used as evidence. Recording that result matters because it shows that the final five-expression set was not chosen because it suited a single convenient source. The verification specifically attempted to add two more independent references and was honest about the failure.
| Source | Response During Build | Role in the Quiz |
|---|---|---|
| Cambridge Dictionary | HTTP 200 | Primary source for all five expressions |
| Wiktionary | HTTP 200 | Independent cross-check for all five expressions |
| Merriam-Webster | HTTP 403 | Evaluated; not included as evidence |
| Collins | HTTP 403 | Evaluated; not included as evidence |
Because the HTTP 403 responses are part of the contract, anyone curious about the sourcing can reproduce the check and arrive at the same evidence list. The quiz does not load external assets, call a gameplay API, or transmit a response, so the sourcing step happens at build time and the runtime only compares the option index you submit against the dictionary-anchored fixture. You can verify both live sources for yourself by opening the Cambridge and Wiktionary entries in a separate tab.
Why the Sourcing Matters for Your Score
The exact 1,000-point total depends on the sourcing. Each correct answer is fixed at 200 points, the run contains exactly five cards, and there is no partial credit or carry-over. Because the answer fixture comes from dictionary content rather than from the quiz author's recall, the conventional phrasing on each card cannot shift between sessions. The contract also describes a pure reducer that owns scoring and round progression, so the score cannot drift by one point because of a presentation bug.
If you finish with 1,000, every card matched the dictionary anchor; if you finish with anything else, at least one card did not. That link between score and source is why the sourcing step is treated as part of the gameplay contract rather than a marketing footnote. The five expressions themselves are short enough to remember, but the wrong-answer choices are calibrated so that without the dictionary check, a confident guess can still lose you the round. The sourcing is what keeps the round honest.
For a deeper look, see Does Mirror Image Quiz Measure Intelligence? No.
For a deeper look, see Visual Pattern Quiz: Five 3×3 Grids to 1,000 Points.