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Circle leagues: circles competing against circles

Your circle joins a public league — "JAMB Maths Weekly", say — every member plays the same quiz that round, and the circle whose members earn the most points wins. A new round opens the moment the old one ends, so there is always something to play for.

Why leagues exist

A circle's own leaderboard tells you how you compare with your circle-mates. What it cannot give you is an outside opponent — the thing that makes a room exciting and a group chat stale. Leagues are how a circle competes against the rest of the app without having to find a specific rival and agree terms. There is no matchmaking and nothing to accept: leagues are always on. A brand-new circle can join today and start ranking immediately, even if it is the only circle in the league for now.

How a round works

1. An admin joins a league. Only the circle's creator or an admin can do this — a league is a commitment for the whole circle, not a personal one. From the circle's Leagues page, tap Browse leagues, search by name or topic, see how many circles are in each, and join with one tap. If you run several circles you choose which one to enter.
2. A quiz is in season. Each league has one quiz per round, chosen automatically from the public catalogue under the league's topic and shown at the top of the league screen.
3. Members play it. Anyone in any participating circle can play. Only your best score on that quiz during the round counts, so retrying for a higher score is fair and repeated attempts do not double-count.
4. Circles are ranked live. A circle's total is the sum of every member's best score. Standings update as soon as someone plays, and are recomputed from the database every time you open them — there is no cached "yesterday's table".
5. The round ends. A weekly league ends seven days after it opened, a monthly one after thirty. The top circle wins.
6. Everyone hears about it. A message is posted into the chat of every participating circle: either "Your circle won this round!" or which circle took the top spot.
7. The next round opens automatically with a freshly chosen quiz.

What you see

In your circle, a Leagues section lists every league the circle has joined with your current rank, your points this round, the time left, and the last few winners. Tapping a league opens the live standings.

On the standings page, every circle in the league is listed by score. Your own circle is marked "You", the top three get medals, and each row shows the score, how many of that circle's members have played, and the circle's MVP — the member with the highest score this round.

Who can do what

Members are not shut out of anything social — they see the standings, they play, they share in the win. Only the decision to sign the whole group up to something is kept with the circle's leadership.

How fairness is enforced

• Best score, not sum of attempts. Playing the quiz five times contributes your highest score once. Spamming retakes cannot carry a circle.
• The round window is strict. Only plays between the round's start and end count. A score from before the round opened does not carry over.
• Mid-round joiners do not backfill. A circle that joins partway through earns only from the moment it joined, so a circle cannot pile in just before the end and inherit weeks of past plays.
• The same code picks the winner. The scoring that runs the live table is the scoring that closes the round, so the final result never differs from what you were watching.

Edge cases, so nothing surprises you

• If nobody in any participating circle plays during a round, it still ends, no winner is recorded, the chat message says so, and the next round opens as normal.
• A topic with few public quizzes will eventually repeat one. The oldest already-used quiz is picked, so you never see the same one two rounds running.
• A circle that leaves mid-round keeps its points on the table until the round ends, then drops out for the next.
• Every league is public. There are no private leagues, no live head-to-head clashes between two circles, and no prizes beyond the announcement and the medal — for now.

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