The quiz that’s hooking Britain’s brightest minds
Are you an HQ Trivia addict? Eleanor Steafel reveals why she and 200,000 others are gripped twice a day
It’s 14:58 and my phone flashes with a notification. I tell my colleagues not to talk to me for 15 minutes and tap to enter the HQ Trivia app. An icon in the corner of the screen tells me 126,000 other people are also waiting on tenterhooks for this afternoon’s quiz to begin. Today’s prize is £1,000, to be split between the winners. Just 12 questions stand between me and what will probably amount to about £8.50. It doesn’t get more thrilling than this at 3pm on a Wednesday.
Question one is easy enough: “A Vulcan salute from the Star Trek universe encourages people to ‘live long’ and what?” I’ve never knowingly watched an episode of Star Trek, but even I know the answer is “prosper”. Five thousand people, however, have clearly been living under a rock and are instantly eliminated.
On to the next. “What is the name of the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse?” I’ve got this. Mule. And the next. But then the kicker: “The Cobb in Lyme Regis is what type of construction?” Damn my useless millennial grasp of geography. As the 10-second timer ticks down, I hastily tap “pavilion”. INCORRECT. Apparently it’s a harbour wall. And with that, I’m out, along with 56,000 others – unable to play again until 9pm tonight.
In scenes not dissimilar to Charlie Brooker’s dystopian thriller, Black
Mirror, a kind of madness appears to have gripped the nation. Twice a day, at 3pm and 9pm, 200,000 Britons and two million more in the United States are ducking out of meetings, pulling their cars over and pausing midconversation to pull out their phones to answer 12 multiple choice questions pitched to them by a live presenter.
Casually mention the words “HQ Trivia” in your office and prepare to glaze over as a surprising number of otherwise sensible colleagues evangelise about the brilliance of the highly addictive online quiz. On Tuesday, Facebook announced new features that will let “creators and partners” make their own game shows and interactive quizzes via Facebook Live, its video live-streaming tool, in what has been seen as a direct move to capitalise on HQ Trivia’s success.
What’s its secret? It is like a quickfire Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, but with rather more minimal prizes: often little more than £1,000, split between everyone who answers all 12 questions. Winners have taken anything from as little as £1.63 to £36,000 (what is particularly exciting, one fan tells me, is when no one wins at all and the money is rolled over to the next game – “the stakes are so much higher then, it’s so tense!”). The biggest UK winner so far received £8,000, but it isn’t really about the money at all. Most people only win about £10, and the questions are so broad that, unless you have a brain the size of Stephen Fry’s, you might never reach the end.
So if the dividends are low, and it doesn’t even offer the satisfaction of completing a good crossword or tricky sudoku, why are smart, high-flying people, up and down the country, devoting so much time to it? “It’s the community that sucks you in,” says one executive HQ Trivia addict, who became hooked after spending a week playing the game every day with her family on holiday. “There was much excitement the other day when my sister won £2.96 after trying for weeks.” It’s the feeling that “you’re playing along with thousands of people, all as hooked and as into it as you are”, which keeps you coming back every day, she says, with the zeal of a convert.
“It’s the habitual rhythm,” offers a colleague who does the afternoon quiz at his desk every day, and then the evening quiz on the sofa with his girlfriend. “If we’re not together, we’ll remind each other to do it, and do it at the same time. We’ll try to help each other with the questions, but you only have 10 seconds to answer each one, so it doesn’t give you much time for conferring.”
Or for googling the answers, which is also part of its charm. Another colleague confesses to tackling the 9pm quiz on speakerphone with his daughter each evening: “I do the politics, she does celebrities.”
It’s becoming so popular that some offices are even pausing every day at 3pm to tackle the questions together. Sharon Carpenter, one of the app’s British presenters who films two live shows a day in HQ’S New York studio, says: “There are bosses who use it as a team-building activity so the whole office will shut down for 15 minutes and come together to play the game. We’re also seeing families come together. This Sunday, with the big [England v Panama] game, you have the opportunity to play as a family and win £8,000.
“People play it in the most extraordinary places, some of the tweets I get of people playing the game… up a mountain skiing, in clubs, somebody sent me a picture on the Eurostar, from a plane.”
One self-confessed HQ addict admits she now has a strategy for playing it at work. “I do it at my desk, but with the sound off, and position my phone upright on my laptop screen. Sometimes I do it with a few other colleagues at the same time. We pick different answers and agree to split any winnings we might get.”
The app was created by Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov, co-founders of now-defunct video-sharing app Vine, who wanted to broadcast a daily quiz “direct to people’s phones”. It’s an unusual business model, funded by investors and its parent company, Intermedia Labs, but essentially making no daily profit at all.
Earlier this year, the hashtag
‘There was much excitement the other day when my sister won £2.96’
#Deletehq surfaced on Twitter because some players weren’t happy with one of the app’s investors, Founders Fund, led by Paypal founder Peter Thiel, which donated $1.25million (£891,000) to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The app seems to have survived that blip, with more people signing up every day, but still, it currently only makes money when it partners with a brand (Nike and Warner Bros have been among the app’s major partners to date).
Most of the time it is only giving £1,000 away, twice a day, in two countries. It helps when a celebrity comes on board with a movie or a new album to plug. Luckily in its relatively short life – the app was only launched in the US in October – HQ has attracted attention from countless stars. The biggest jackpot so far in the States was $300,000 (about £227,000), which was given away to 83 winners when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson appeared as a guest presenter. Other guests have included Sting, Lily Allen, and even England’s Jesse Lingard, who sent a special message from his hotel room in Russia. “I’m here at the World Cup, ready to win big for England, before I come back and conquer HQ Trivia,” he told delighted fans.
Carpenter, one of the most popular of the presenters (fans have firm tribal allegiances to their favourites), also reports for The Wendy Williams Show in the US and the BBC World Service, and shares her HQ hosting role with the brilliantly named Beric Livingstone, who looks a little like the love child of David Cameron and one of Tolkien’s elves, complete with the voice of Frank Spencer.
Seeing the app grow from being Us-only to having 200,000 users in the UK has been “really exciting”, she says. “It’s a live show, so anything can happen and it’s all in real time, so if you miss it there’s the Fomo effect. People also just love to challenge themselves.
“It’s a game show but there’s a lot you can learn. My parents are both doctors and used to teach at Harvard, but they have trouble getting past question six.”
“It’s the chance to feel part of a real quiz show,” concludes one regular player. “With TV quiz shows, you’re shouting at the telly. With pub quizzes and other online quizzes, it’s all too easy to just google the answer.
“The live element of this, as well as the fact that you only have 10 seconds per question, is what makes it work.”
For many, it’s little more than a waste of 15 minutes. But it’s totally harmless, won’t lose you any money and, if nothing else, could arm you with some impressively niche general knowledge for your next pub quiz. See you all at 9pm for the next show.