Duels — head-to-head quiz battles

Open the Duels tab and you’ll see three entry points. Each is designed for a different mood.

• Quick Match — a random opponent at roughly your level, with optional category filters (see below). Ranks and XP both move. The default mode.
• Challenge a Friend — pick anyone you follow (or anyone on a public profile) and send them a topic. Same scoring as Quick Match, just hand-picked. Great for rivalries.
• Practice — solo round against a bot. No rank impact, no XP penalty for losing. Use this to warm up or test a topic privately.

Hitting "Quick Match" opens a small preferences modal before you queue. It pre-fills with your top three interests and the categories you’ve recently played, so a one-tap "Find a duel" works for most people — but you can also pick up to five specific categories to narrow the pool.

Preferences are stored as a soft filter : if no one matching your picks shows up after ~30 seconds, the matcher widens to neighbouring categories rather than leaving you in the queue forever. You’ll see a small "expanding search" hint on the lobby card while it widens.

• Pre-checked picks — your interests + recently-duelled categories (max 5).
• Custom picks — add or remove categories by tapping the chips; tap "Clear" to reset.
• Bot fallback — if no human shows up after the timeout, you can switch to a bot duel from the same lobby card without re-queuing.

Free starts 1 duel per day; Pro starts 10. All three modes share the same daily counter, and the cap resets at midnight UTC. Unused duels do not carry over.

Only the moment the duel goes live (both sides ready, or practice launched) burns a slot. Sending and accepting challenges is always free — they only count once the duel actually starts.

Both dialogs (Challenge a Friend and Quick Match) now pre-check your remaining starts before you invest time picking a topic. If you’re already over today’s cap, the dialog opens straight into an upsell card with the next reset time and a Pro upgrade CTA — no more typing a topic only to be rejected at submit time.

Each duel is 5 rounds on a topic the challenger picked (or that Quick Match inferred from your overlap). Every round has a 30-second timer ; faster correct answers score more. Between rounds there’s a brief reveal pause so both players see the truth before the next question. After round 5 the result screen shows the side-by-side breakdown, the XP delta, and a "Rematch {name}" button when both players are still under their daily cap.

If you and your opponent share enough taste, the rematch can be one tap. Otherwise the result screen routes you to the lobby with a "Find another duel" link.

Sent a challenge to a friend? They have 72 hours to accept or decline. If nothing happens before that, the challenge auto-expires — the row disappears from your pending lobby and a friendly "your challenge to @username expired" notification lands in your inbox so you know to follow up (or move on).

Declining a challenge also notifies the sender. The dashboard tab updates in real time — no more manual page refresh needed to clear the row.

Duel outcomes feed into the same global ranking shown on `/community/leaderboard`. Time-windowed boards (weekly / monthly / all-time) let new players climb without competing against year-one veterans.

Following an opponent after a tough duel is a one-tap shortcut to future rematches via Challenge a Friend.

Every public profile has a kebab `⋯` menu next to the Challenge button with two actions: Block and Report. Blocks are symmetric — once you block someone, neither of you can send the other a duel challenge, the Challenge button disappears on both profiles, and you’re excluded from each other’s Quick Match pool. The other user is not notified.

Manage your blocks any time in Settings → Account → Blocked Explorers — the page lists everyone you’ve blocked with an "Unblock" button on each row. Reports go to the Yoonle safety team ; we aim to triage within 24 hours.

Uploaded avatars and cover images are automatically screened by Azure AI Content Safety before they’re published. Display names, bios, and featured trail picks rely on the community-reporting flow above. Topics typed into the challenge dialog are validated by an AI evaluator before the duel is generated — nonsense topics ("aaaa", "spoon") and obviously offensive ones are rejected inline with a "pick a clearer topic" hint instead of burning a daily slot.