MCQ flaw checker
Paste one multiple choice question and see which of the mechanical rules would throw it out. The rules are the generator's own, and the check runs in your browser: the question is never sent anywhere.
The rules it runs
Blocks means the generator discards a question that trips the rule. Warns means the prompt forbids it and a reader should look again, but no gate rejects it on its own.
| Rule | Severity | What fires it |
|---|---|---|
| Correct option conspicuously longest | Blocks | The key runs more than 60 percent longer than the longest distractor, or more than twice the average of them. |
| Duplicate or overlapping options | Blocks, or warns on an overlap | Two options carry the same text, or share almost every distinctive word. |
| All of the above, none of the above, both A and B | Blocks | An option that refers to the other options instead of answering the question. |
| An absolute in a single option | Warns | always, never, only, all or none appears in one option and in no other. |
| Negative stem without emphasis | Warns | The stem turns on not, except, least likely or incorrect, written in lower case. |
| Lead-in that is not a question | Blocks | Which of the following is true, which statement is correct, or a stem that never asks anything. |
| The stem refers to the source | Blocks | the text, the passage, according to the author, on page 12, or a placeholder such as substance X. |
| Fewer than four options, or more than five | Blocks under four, warns over five | The format is four or five options. Under four is rejected outright. |
| Answer key missing or out of range | Blocks | No key was marked, or the key points at a letter that is not one of the options. |
| Grammatical cue | Warns | The stem ends in an and exactly one option starts with a vowel. |
| One option repeats the stem | Warns | A single option echoes the stem words while the others do not. |
| Bare letter in the explanation | Warns | Option A is correct, rather than the option named by its content with the letter in brackets. |
What it cannot do
These are the mechanical checks the generator applies before the quote and second-model checks. They cannot judge whether the medicine is right. A question can pass every rule here and still be wrong about the medicine, or have a key that a careful student would argue with. On this site the next two steps are the ones that catch that: the quote a question cites is looked for in the stored text of the page it names, and a second model from a different family answers the question from the quotes alone, without the key.
See how a question gets checked for the whole pipeline, and how often each model family gets caught for what these rules throw away in practice.
Questions people ask
Does the question leave my browser?
No. The checker is a script on this page. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored and the page works the same with the network unplugged after it has loaded.
Are these the same rules the generator uses?
The blocking ones are the same code. The page script is built from src/lib/mcq_rules.js, which is also what the generator imports, so a rule cannot change on one side and not the other. The warnings are rules the prompt states and a reader has to judge.
My question passed. Is it a good question?
It has no mechanical flaw. Whether the medicine is right, whether the key is defensible and whether each distractor is plausible are not things these rules can see. That is what the quote check and the second model are for.
How should I paste the question?
The stem on the first lines, then one option per line starting with its letter, then the key. Mark the key with an asterisk on its option line or write a line reading Answer: C. An Explanation: line is optional and is only read by the bare letter rule.
No account needed to try it. Registering keeps your library, grades and review queue across devices.
Published , updated .