The Journey to #1 on JetPunk

It has taken many many years, but relessness the once mighty, self-declared "King of JetPunk", has been dethroned.

You can see below the graph showing the cumulative takes of relessness and myself over time. Relessness was the first user to reach 300k, 400k, 500k, 1m, 2m, 5m, 10m, 20m, 25m, and even 26m. But no longer, a coup d'état has taken place, and Stewart has taken rule.

However, unlike Avatar reclaiming #1 from Avengers: Endgame (in terms of Worldwide Box Office), I am confident relessness will not reclaim the title. Especially since he has not even logged-in to JetPunk since earlier this year, and has not commented since 2020.

So how did this come to be? How did I, a mere British mortal, manage to overcome a self-declared "King"? Well, let's first take a look at the history of the #1 user on JetPunk, since relessness was not always the top-dog of quizzers!

The next update (left image) after this comes in July 2012. CBTemple is still #1, but relessness is rising, having the greatest number of user-created quizzes (since geoPunk is affiliated). Currently ranked #12, he would continue rising quickly up the ranks.

On the right, you can see 3 months later in October 2012. CBTemple has remained #1 this whole time, but relessness is now #3 and has almost twice as many quizzes as anybody else, giving him the greatest chance of success.

Relessness would remain #1 all the way until September 2nd 2023, when he was finally dethroned, after 9.5 years on the podium, a total of 3452 days on the top.

Relessness, real name Adam, is a British man who was only a few years older than myself. Unfortunately, not much is known about him publicly, but he went to university we know that.

The main interaction with relessness recently was via the JetPunk discord back in 2019, where he appeared quite overcome with his "power" and was not humble in the slightest. Although maybe they were sarcastic jokes, it's hard to tell over the internet. Either way, here were my two favorite quotes:

To be fair to him, he was useful for myself and others in the earlier days of JetPunk. And in private conversations (again via Discord), he was more ordinary and not as in-your-face as he appeared on the public discord.

I joined JetPunk January 12th, 2016. Though did not create my first quiz until January 29th 2016. I suppose that's quite quick to go from quiztaker to quizmaker. So, at the point I joined JetPunk, relessness had just crossed 1.6 million takes after 4 years on JetPunk. How on earth did I manage to catch-up to relessness, despite being 4 years late to the party?

Well, for starters, 7.5 years is a really long time. But also, very early on I made many quizzes, and many well-liked and unique quizzes, which lead to me to gain takes rather quickly, reaching 1000 takes in just 2 weeks, and having never had a single day less than 9 takes since creating quizzes.

So what quizzes were these early ones? Well, my very first quizzes were:

Top 25 Social Networks by Number of Active Users

10 Facts about Pi

Not what you might expect, but day 1 they got me 20 takes, so I wasn't complaining! After a couple small geography quizzes, I created Chess Pieces (With Board and Pictures!), which would eventually become my first featured quiz (though not till June 10th 2016). However, this quiz put me on the map, since it used the quiz editor in a very creative way which had not been done as much before. This was only early February, when I was creating 4 or 5 quizzes a day.

My next "revelation" would be my delving into puzzles, specifically ABC Path - Puzzle Logic Game #1, which, much like the Chess quiz, used the quiz editor in a very inventive and unique way.

However, the quiz that defined my career was Country Word Search #1 on February 4th. Originally using an image, since SVGs weren't available to the public yet, people absolutely loved this type of quiz. Given it got 50 takes in the first 24 hours (which was huge for the time), it was very clear this should be the path I went down.

By the end of February 2016, I would have 64 quizzes and almost 3000 takes. Of which there were 20 Country Word Search, 7 US States Word Search and 3 Animals Word Search. These 30 quizzes had accumulated me 1500 takes in less than 1 month.

Towards the end of February there was the creation of another popular series: World Map with 10 Extra Borders. This quiz again used images, and with 56 takes in the first 24 hours it was clear that geography and maps were popular on JetPunk. Needless to say by the end of March 2016 there was 8 World Map versions, 2 Europe Maps and an Asia Map as well. By the end of March I was up to 5.5k total takes, and with exams looming my quiz output slowed down.

Any day during April and May when I released quizzes, my takes would shoot up 100-200 takes, then would die down again. It would remain this way until my first front-paged quiz - the Chess one - gained me almost 4000 takes in a single day. Taking me to 20,000 takes total. For the time, having such a low % of takes from your top quiz was unheard of for such a small quizmaker. But after all by this point I had 150 quizzes, most of which had done pretty well.

Summer 2016 was a major turning point, since this introduced the ability for quizmakers to include SVG maps in their quizzes!

Although my inspiration, and thus quiz output, began to dwindle towards the end of 2016. Especially since I had just started University and so available time to make quizzes was limited.

I ended my first year on JetPunk with 34,000 takes - which is a phenomenal total given the time - but is also lower than it could have been.

Up until this point, while I'd delved into SVGs, and became a bit of a mini expert on them, I still hadn't had a blow-away idea for them. That was until this came to mind...

This is Zone 1 of the London Underground. I released this quiz February 12th 2017, and 4 hours later it was featured by Quizmaster / Dan. This remains, to this day, one of my fastest ever featured quizzes. This is what Dan said about it in a blog, How To Make Your Quiz Eligible For Points:

Anyway, jumping forward in time, it wouldn't be until February 2018 when I hit 100k, and with this I reached the top 60 users on JetPunk. From this point, I steadily increased to hit 1 million takes in August 2019, becoming the 11th user to hit the mark. By now I was regularly the 2nd biggest gainer every month, behind only reless. Despite gaining 150-200k per month by the end of 2019, it seemed impossible to catch up to his 180-250k monthly totals.

This all changed in 2020. January 2020, I had my best month ever, and finally overtook reless on monthly totals, in fact every single month (except December 2020) since then I have beaten relessness:

And while I was still gaining, I wasn't gaining enough to really catch-up. I remember running estimates at the time and it would take 10+ years for me to catch him. That all changed when 2022 came around.

For anybody unaware, 2022 was a major turning point for JetPunk, largely attributed to changes in google's algorithms and TikTok. More on that in this chart: JetPunk Quizzes Taken By Month.

From that chart, and my image above, you can see from March 2022 JetPunk went through an absolute explosion, and thanks to my quizzes and my non-English contributions of them, I catapulted to over 1 million takes a month in April and May 2022! Instead of the 1 or 2 thousand I was gaining each day on relessness, it was now pushing 13-14k per day! At that rate I would've passed him before the end of 2022, but alas the summer months came, and so did the the usual JetPunk summer slump.

To date, the best ever month from a user other than myself was relessness in March 2023 with 763k. So even still, I was gaining more than anybody else ever has.

It was a steady ride throughout 2023 to get to the taking point, but it has finally happened, and it's finally over. I will still track my stats, as I have done for 7.5 years, but now the pressure of competition is off for now.

Will I be #1 forever? I doubt it, there's many many great quizmakers out there, some with real potential to sweep the competition (overtired rings a bell). But I suspect the next #1 will come from someone having their quiz explode on social media. Or elsewhere, out of pure luck. It took 9.5 years for there to be a different #1, I'd hope to keep it for a bit longer. Although I don't have the lead that relessness had for years and years.

While this has been a long journey to get here, there is also so much more we can learn from this.

Don't forget to also read my special interview with baptistegorce: Interview of a JetPunker #30 - Stewart, which features a special Q&A at the end for anybody interested!