Friends & sponsors

The people behind the quiz.

THAT History Quiz wouldn’t exist without a small set of people, products, and competitions. We built it on their work, learned from their ideas, and want you to know who they are.

Loud Interactive

Accelerate your brand with AI-powered SEO

Chicago-based SEO and digital strategy firm founded by Brent D. Payne — former Amazon and Groupon SEO lead. Loud blends 25 years of search expertise with AI tooling to lift visibility for enterprise clients across e-commerce, travel, healthcare, media, and venture-backed startups. Loud also built and operates THAT History Quiz.

What you should check out

Their case studies on Fortune 500 reputation rescues
ContentPerfect.ai, their flagship AI content product
The Loud blog for SEO + AI strategy you can actually use

Visit Loud Interactive

Content Perfect

AI-powered SEO content plans and blog posts

Content Perfect (contentperfect.loud.us) generates entire SEO content programs — keyword research, content plans, outlines, and full blog posts — calibrated to each client's domain authority and competitive set. Built by Loud Interactive and used in-house to scale content across hundreds of client domains.

What you should check out

How the plan-to-post pipeline turns one keyword into a full editorial calendar
Their domain-aware brief generator (every post knows your site)
The price-per-post math vs. a freelance writer

Visit Content Perfect

The Great History Challenge

History has never been this fun

A nationwide buzzer-based history competition for middle school students. Schools host a fall online qualifier; top scorers advance to Jeopardy!-style regional championships in cities across the country, then a national final. Over 40,000 students from 1,000+ schools competed in the most recent season. THAT History Quiz exists because of GHC — David Emmerich Payne is a national finalist heading into the 2026 nationals.

What you should check out

How the regional buzzer rounds work (it looks more like a sports tournament than a quiz)
Their teacher resources — GHC is designed to be drop-in easy for schools
The nationals event format (worth attending if you have a middle schooler who loves history)

Visit Great History Challenge

Mark Glickman

Inventor of the Glicko and Glicko-2 rating systems

Senior Lecturer in Statistics at Harvard. Created the Glicko rating system in 1995 to fix a key gap in Elo: ratings should carry uncertainty, not a single point estimate. Glicko-2 followed, and both are now used by chess organizations, video games, and competitive platforms worldwide — including this one. Glickman has chaired the US Chess Ratings Committee for nearly three decades and reached US national master in tournament play in 1988.

What you should check out

The original Glicko paper (the math is shorter and friendlier than you'd guess)
His Perpetual Chess Podcast episode for the human story behind the math
Why Chess.com, Lichess, and most modern rating systems descend from his work

Visit glicko.net

Want to be on this page?

If you run a product, school program, or competition that connects with history, ratings, or learning — and you’d like to be listed here — reach out.

Email brent@loud.us