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The Short Answer slide is an open quiz question with no options to pick from. Instead of choosing, participants type their answer — which must match one of the answers you accept to score points. With no multiple choice to guess from, it’s a much truer test of what your audience actually knows.

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How It Works

Short Answer is a quiz question type — for leaderboard, team play, and the full quiz walkthrough, see How to make and run a quiz. When you present a Short Answer slide, every player sees the question and a text box on their device. They type their answer and submit before the timer runs out. An answer scores points if it matches the correct answer to display or any of the other accepted answers you’ve listed. Because there are no options to choose from, guessing is much harder than on a Pick Answer slide — which makes Short Answer a more accurate reflection of your participants’ subject knowledge.

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Setting Up a Short Answer Slide

1

Add the slide

In the editor, create a new slide and select Short Answer from the Quiz section of the slide type picker.
2

Write your question

Type your question in the Your question field in the right-hand column.
3

Add the correct answer to display

This is the main answer you accept, and the only one shown on screen when the timer is up. If a player types something that matches one of your other accepted answers instead, it still counts as correct and scores points — it just won’t be the answer displayed on the results screen.
4

Add other accepted answers

Add any alternatives besides the “correct answer to display” that you also want to mark correct and award points for.
5

Adjust the settings

Set the time, points, and other settings (see below).
If you want to accept misspellings, add as many likely misspellings of the answer as you can think of into the other accepted answers field. Short Answer matches against the exact answers you list, so spelling variants you don’t add won’t be counted automatically.

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Settings

The maximum and minimum points possible for the question. With Faster answers get more points off, every correct answer receives the maximum.
Toggle on to reward players who answer sooner.
The number of seconds each player has to type their answer.
Toggle on to add a leaderboard slide automatically after this question.
Because players type free text, the Short Answer slide is eligible for the profanity filter setting, which blocks banned words entered by audience members.

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How Answers Are Matched

When a player submits an answer, AhaSlides compares it against your correct answer to display and every other accepted answer. Before comparing, it makes four allowances:
  • Capitalisation is ignored — paris, Paris, and PARIS all match an accepted answer of Paris, so there is no need to list capitalisation variants.
  • Spaces before and after the answer are ignored, so a stray space a player types on a phone keyboard won’t cost them the point.
  • Curly and straight quote marks are treated as the same character, so an apostrophe or speech mark that a phone keyboard auto-curls still matches an accepted answer typed with a plain straight one.
  • Accented characters are normalised, so the same accented letter still matches when a player’s keyboard or input method produces it differently.
Beyond those allowances the answer has to match exactly. In particular, punctuation counts: Dr. Smith does not match Dr Smith, and 1,000 does not match 1000. Spelling counts too — a misspelling only scores if you listed it.
If a punctuation or spelling difference would be unfair to your players, either add both versions to other accepted answers before you present, or accept the answers manually once the results are shown (see below).

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The Results Display

After your participants have submitted their answers and the correct answer is revealed, the results screen shows:
  1. The correct answer to display.
  2. Incorrect answers: if there are 4 or fewer different incorrect answers, each one is displayed; if there are 5 or more, three incorrect answers are displayed along with an other answers entry that groups together every remaining incorrect answer.

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Manually Accepting Answers

Sometimes a player types an answer that doesn’t exactly match any of your accepted answers, but you still consider it correct (a synonym, an abbreviation, a typo you didn’t anticipate). You can accept these on the fly. Once the question results are shown, an Accept more answers button appears at the bottom of the slide. Click it to bring up every answer players submitted for that question.
  • Click the circle in the top-right corner of any answer box to accept that answer and award its points.
  • Answers are grouped when identical and arranged by how many players wrote them, so the most common “technically incorrect” answers — the ones you’re most likely to accept — appear first. You can also see who entered each answer.
When you’ve accepted everything you want, click See full results.

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Previewing and Presenting

Click Preview in the top header to rehearse the slide from both the presenter and player view before going live. When you’re ready, click Present — players join at the access code, enter their name, and type their answers on their phones.
For the full walkthrough of building and hosting a quiz — joining, the lobby, team play, and more — see How to make and run a quiz.

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How to Create a Good Short Answer Slide

  • Ask for a short, specific answer — a single word, name, number, or short phrase works best when players are typing on a phone.
  • List every reasonable accepted answer — synonyms, abbreviations, and common misspellings — so you don’t have to accept them manually under time pressure.
  • Avoid questions with many valid phrasings — “Name a benefit of exercise” has too many right answers; “What organ pumps blood?” has one.
  • Use it where guessing would undermine the quiz — vocabulary, capitals, formulas, dates, and definitions are ideal.

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Common Use Cases

Classroom Recall

Spelling, vocabulary, capitals, dates, and formulas where you want genuine recall, not recognition.

Corporate Training

Confirm trainees can produce a key term or figure from memory, not just recognise it in a list.

Trivia Nights

Make rounds harder and more rewarding by removing the multiple-choice safety net.

Brand and Product Knowledge

Check that staff can name a value, feature, or policy unprompted.

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Have a question?

Contact our support team — if you’re logged in, use the chat bubble in the bottom-right of your dashboard; otherwise contact us here or email hi@ahaslides.com.

Related topics

How to Create and Score a Pick Answer Quiz SlideHow to Make and Run a Quiz in AhaSlidesHow to Set Up a Correct Order Quiz Slide in AhaSlidesHow to Use the Draw Answer Slide in AhaSlidesHow to Set Up a Match Pairs Quiz Slide in AhaSlides