Mechanisms are provided for answering an input question. An input question to be answered from a source is received and processed to one or more extract features of the input question. The extracted one or more features are compared to cached features stored in one or more entries of a question and answer (QA) cache. A determination is made as to whether there is a matching entry in the one or more entries of the QA cache based on results of the comparing and, if so, candidate answer information is retrieved from the matching entry. The retrieved candidate answer information is returned to the source of the input question as candidate answer information for answering the input question.