HQ Trivia: what you need to know about the viral quiz game app

So you've not not heard of HQ Trivia, the smartphone gameshow app that’s stolen your loved ones from you for the last month? Do you a) Need to try this hot new craze, b) Want to know more, or c) Say, “No thanks, I learnt my lesson with Tide Pods”?

If a) or b), let me explain. Every day at 3pm and 9pm around 60,000 players tune in to an ersatz TV quiz show live, where 12 cheery questions are posed by a bubbly host, each with three possible answers. Players who answer all of them correctly split a cash prize of up to £4,000.

Presented in the UK by broadcast journalist Sharon Carpenter, it’s akin to tuning in to a late-night phone-in quiz channel — only less seedy — as Carpenter freewheels through birthday shout-outs, nods to user comments on the on-screen Live Feed and current events, asking questions such as “Who was Eugene Cernan?” (answer: the last man to walk on the Moon). You’ll also need a username — Quiz on My Face, sadly, is taken.

My experience was short-lived: I did it and crashed out on question four because I had no idea Cernan was an astronaut rather than a music producer. The Live Feed also made me panic.

The game is already wildly popular in London. With a “Google-proof” 10 seconds to answer each question, two heads or more are encouraged. It’s not unusual to see gaggles of excitable teens (and pensioners) huddled around a phone, shouting the five- second countdown to the game’s start. Videos with titles such as Watch This Woman React to Winning HQ Trivia have driven the frenzy further among a cleverly cultivated community which feeds itself on Snapchat and Twitter updates throughout the day.

Its viral success is no accident: the game was created by the founders of Vine, Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov, who know a thing or two about capturing youth markets, having sold the web video loop platform to Twitter for £21.5 million in 2012.

The game launched in the US in August, where up to 1.5 million people can play, and where it has already spawned pseudo-celebrities.

Bearded host turned hearthrob Scott “Quiz Daddy” Rogowsky, who bears a passing resemblance to actor John Krasinski, has his own cult following.

Allan Gibbons — better known by his username AllanG — is an HQ Trivia celebrity, born from his knack of dominating the show’s daily competitions.

US TV talkshow star Jimmy Kimmel has guest-hosted while former US President Barack Obama was reported to have won $21.98 on his wife Michelle’s birthday in January (the former president’s communications director, Katie Hill, later confirmed it was an imposter).

Will it kill the great British pub quiz? The Atlantic has already cheerfully labelled the phenomenon a “harbinger of dystopia”, representing “some awful, plausible future not yet realised but just over the horizon: one where expertise isn’t measured by knowledge but by instinct tripped out on illusion”.

Or, it’s just a quiz. Your choice.