What 7,880 Survey Boards Reveal About Top Answers

Advice about survey games is usually based on feel: say the obvious thing, keep it short. We have the classic question bank that the game deals from, so we counted. This post covers 7,880 boards holding almost 42,000 answers, and the numbers back up some of the usual advice and sharpen the rest.

The top answer is worth about 42 points

Across all boards, the number-one answer averages 42.2 points, and the median is 41. More than half of boards (54.1%) have a top answer worth 40 or more. Runaway answers are less common than they feel: only about one board in ten has a top answer worth 60 or more. At the other end, 6.6% of boards have a top answer under 25 points, which means the whole board is wide open.

Points fall away quickly

The second answer is worth about half the first, and the third about half the second. After that the drop slows down, and every remaining answer is worth single digits on average.

On an average board the top answer holds 45.8% of all the points, and the top two together hold 69.7%. A team that finds those two and then strikes out has still put most of the round into the pot. That is why a steal is so valuable: the stealing team needs one answer, often a small one, to take a pot built mostly from the two big ones.

Almost one board in five is a toss-up at the top

The typical gap between the first and second answer is 16 points. On 24.9% of boards the gap is 30 points or more, so the top answer is clear. On 18.5% of boards the gap is five points or fewer. In a Face-Off on one of those boards, the “obvious” answer and its rival are worth nearly the same, and whoever answers second has a real chance of winning control.

Most boards have five or six answers

The more answers a board has, the less the top one is worth. A four-answer board concentrates its points at the top; a seven-answer board spreads them out. The last answer on a board is worth a median of five points, and on 30.9% of boards it is worth three or fewer. Chasing the final hidden answer rarely pays for the strike it risks.

The answers that win most often

“Money” is the top answer on 108 boards and appears somewhere on 273. “Car” appears on 269, “clothes” on 197 and “food” on 191. The list is made of everyday nouns: things people own, wear, eat and visit. “New York” is the only place in the top ten.

Answers are short

Of all the answers we counted, 63.3% are a single word and 28.6% are two words. Fewer than one answer in fifty runs to four words or more. If you are typing a sentence, you are almost certainly describing an answer that the board states in one word.

How the questions are phrased

About 77% of questions begin with the word “Name”: 40.9% with “Name something”, 32.3% with “Name a” or “Name an”, and the rest with other forms. Direct questions starting with what, which, who or how make up 7.5%, “Tell me” 4.9%, hypotheticals starting with “If” 3.0% and “Besides…” questions 2.1%. The median question is 11 words long. If you write your own boards, that is the template to copy; our guide to writing survey questions covers the rest.

Boards rarely add up to 100

The median board totals 95 points, and the average is 92.1. The likely reason is that answers given by only one or two people in a survey are left off the board. A team that clears a board should expect about 95 points, not 100.

What to do with this

• In a Face-Off, say the plainest answer at once. The top answer is worth 42 points on average, almost half the board.
• Bank the top two, then be careful. After them about 70% of the points are gone, and the answers that remain average 13 points or fewer.
• On a steal, name the most ordinary thing that is missing. You need one answer, and small ones count.
• Keep answers to one or two words. More than nine in ten board answers are that short.
• When your mind goes blank, think of everyday nouns. Money, car, clothes and food fit more boards than anything else.

For the reasoning behind these habits, read how to win at Family Feud.

How we counted

The figures come from the game's classic question bank as it stood in November 2026: 8,782 boards. We left out 902 boards that had fewer than three answers, more than eight answers, or an answer worth zero points, which leaves the 7,880 analysed here. Answers were compared after lowercasing and removing punctuation, so “car” and “cars” were counted separately. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place.