Every weekday at noon and 6 PM PST, my phone receives a notification. It doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing, it's a notification I must heed. This isn't any run-of-the-mill text or email notification, no. This notification is especially important because it informs me that HQ Trivia has gone live.
At this point, you may be wondering what exactly HQ Trivia is and why I'm so excited about a trivia game. Well, allow me to explain. HQ Trivia is a daily trivia game app (available on iPhone and Andriod) where millions of players from all over the world compete live to win money. It's free to play, but you can win or split a real cash prize if you can correctly answer a series of 12 multiple-choice questions that get increasingly difficult as the game progresses.
Seems pretty easy, right? Not so much. To make it even more difficult, you only have ten seconds to read the question and choose from three answer choices. It can get pretty tricky, especially in later questions that actually require a little bit of thought.
Monday through Friday, the game goes live twice daily with a cash prize is $5000 each time, which is split evenly between each player who manages to answer all the questions correctly. On Saturdays, only the 6 PM game is played. But on Sundays, HQ puts on a 6 PM game with a substantially larger prize at stake: as of late, it's been around $25000.
The game is usually hosted by Scott Rogowsky, a 33-year-old comedian from New York City, but other hosts are featured regularly as well.
Occasionally, HQ will hold sponsored games with unique prizes. In March, HQ Trivia partnered with Nike in a special game dubbed "Airmax Day" during which each winner received a special, limited edition pair of Nike Air Max shoes. Earlier this month, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson hosted a special game with a $300,000 prize to promote his new movie, Rampage. A special game was even broadcast during this year's Superbowl halftime show.
The game regularly attracts around 1.5 million players per evening game, sometimes even reaching counts of over 2 million.
Truthfully, I love HQ. I play it whenever I'm able, and I love flexing my trivia abilities a little bit each day, even if it doesn't necessarily lead to me winning anything.
But, a few weeks ago, my HQ dreams came true when I finally won my very first game of HQ. Earning a whopping $0.56 and a lifetime of bragging rights, it is still one of my proudest achievements.
If you want to get your trivia on and become an "HQtie" yourself, just download the app, sign up for an account and wait until noon or 6 PM PST to try your luck!
P.S. If you do sign up, make sure to use my referral code, "ggeorgiaa"!