A Longshots alternative: try Goalless for obscure football answers

Looking for a Longshots alternative that puts your obscure football knowledge to work? Goalless gives you one daily question and five opportunities to find a valid answer that none of the real survey respondents gave. The aim is simple: find the answers other people missed and keep your score as low as possible.

Longshots is a daily football quiz with seven questions and 25 seconds for each. Rarer correct answers score from further out. If that idea of looking beyond the obvious brought you here, Goalless has a challenge for you: can you come up with something nobody in its survey said?

Goalless uses real people’s answers. A zero means your answer fits the question and none of those respondents gave it. That forgotten loan signing or former international you remember from an old team sheet might finally have a use.

How to play Goalless

Goalless is a free daily football quiz inspired by Pointless. Each day brings a question, which can be about players, managers, club teams or national teams. Your job is to submit five answers that fit it.

The important bit is that Goalless uses real people’s answers. You are trying to find something the survey respondents did not say, rather than simply naming the least famous player you know.

1. Read the question carefully. Every guess needs to meet its conditions. An obscure name is no use if it does not qualify.
2. Think through your options. Start with the answers you know, then work towards the names other people might overlook.
3. Submit five guesses. After your fifth answer, your choices are locked in.
4. See how they scored. Common answers score higher; rare answers score lower. A valid answer nobody in the survey gave scores zero. An incorrect answer adds 100 points.

The aim is to finish with a low total. Finding at least one zero also unlocks the Zero Shield, which removes your highest answer score from your total. That gives you a reason to search for a genuinely overlooked answer rather than settling for five familiar ones.

The survey is what makes it interesting

Being correct is only the first part of Goalless. You also have to judge what other people are likely to remember. A household name can fit perfectly and still leave you with a higher score than a less obvious answer.

That does not mean the least famous footballer is always your best bet. The question might bring a particular club, tournament or era to mind, making a supposedly obscure name an obvious choice for people who know that subject. You are playing against the answers in the survey, not an abstract measure of how famous someone is.

There is no need to guess how obscure your answer looks to a computer. When the scores arrive, you find out whether real respondents thought of it too. Sometimes your clever pick will turn out to be popular. Sometimes a name you nearly dismissed will get you the zero you were chasing.

Five guesses, five decisions

Having five opportunities at the same question gives you room to work through your football memory. You might think of two answers straight away, then spend the remaining choices digging into a different era or remembering a player’s less celebrated spell at another club.

Each guess still needs to earn its place. An incorrect answer adds 100 points, so reaching for an unfamiliar name without being sure it qualifies can be costly. The useful bit of knowledge is often a small detail: a transfer you remember, a national team appearance or a club connection that makes an answer valid.

The Zero Shield adds another decision. Find one zero and your highest score is removed. You do not have to find five unmentioned answers for a zero to make a difference to your result. Keep looking for that overlooked option even if your other choices feel fairly familiar.

What counts as a win? Your final score and tier

After your five guesses, Goalless adds up your answer scores and applies the Zero Shield if you found a zero. You win by finishing within that day’s Mid-table threshold or better. Go above it and you finish in Relegation, which counts as a loss. You can win without finding a zero, but lower scores earn better finishes.

Your result falls into one of five football-themed tiers:

• Invincible! — a final score of zero, the best possible finish.
• Champions — the lowest non-zero scoring band.
• European Qualification — the next band, still a winning result.
• Mid-table — the final winning band: you have done enough to stay up.
• Relegation — above the day’s winning threshold, so it is a loss.

The score boundaries for Champions, European Qualification and Mid-table vary with the survey results for each day’s question. The results screen shows that day’s ranges, so there is no single points target that guarantees the same tier every day. Invincible always means zero.

Looking for games like Longshots? Start with today’s question

The reason to try Goalless is its survey challenge: one question, five guesses, and the satisfaction of finding a valid answer real people overlooked. It is a free football Pointless-style quiz with a fresh question each day.

Have a go and compare your result with your mates. You might recognise the same obvious answers, but who can find the one the survey missed? Take your longshots and see whether your football memory can get you a zero.