Cut

What a cut is

A cut is a set point in a Speed Survivor game where the bottom of the field, ranked by points, is removed from the contest. Entrants below the line stop scoring from that moment and cannot reach the payout. Everyone above it plays on. Cuts are how a Speed Survivor contest thins its field even for players who have not answered wrong, which keeps pressure on every question rather than only on the last few.

At launch there is a single cut at halftime. The format is moving toward a cut at the end of each quarter, so the field narrows in steps across the game the way a season-long pool narrows week by week.

An example

In a hypothetical contest, two players reach halftime with no wrong answers, but one answered slowly on every question and sits near the bottom of the standings. At the halftime cut, the bottom of the field is removed and that player is out, while the faster player moves into the second half. Being right kept both in the game until then; being right quickly is what carried one of them past the cut.

Cuts, lives and elimination

A cut is one of three ways out of a contest. In a single-life contest, one wrong answer eliminates you; in a multi-life contest you go out when you lose your last of your lives. A cut applies in both formats, on top of those rules.

In Speed Survivor

Surviving every cut and the final whistle puts you in the group that gets paid, ranked by points. Survive the cuts, and you are in the group that splits the pot. How it works shows where the cut falls in a full game.