Trivia Challenge
A party trivia game for a room full of phones. One person opens a room, everybody else taps the link, and the questions arrive on every screen at the same moment. Four answers, one tap, and the scoreboard after each one.
How to play
One person presses NEW ROOM and gets a four-character code and a link. Everyone else opens the link, or types the code — up to ten players in a room.
The host picks the categories, how many questions to ask and how long each one stays open, then presses start. Nobody else has to set anything up.
Each question shows on every phone at once with four answers, colour-coded and lettered A to D. Tap one. The first tap is the answer: there is no changing it, because the score is partly made of how quickly it came.
Then the reveal — the right answer, a line saying why, what you scored, and where everyone stands. The host presses NEXT, or it moves on by itself after a few seconds so a host who puts their phone down does not stall the room.
How it works
The questions are written fresh for each game from the categories the host chose, which is why the first one takes a few seconds to arrive. There is no fixed question bank to exhaust and no round you have played before.
The game itself runs on a server, not in anybody's browser. Each phone is sent only what it is allowed to know: the question and the choices while the question is open, and the answer key only once the question has closed. The host has no more information than anyone else.
Everything is kept in step by that server rather than by one player's device, so a phone that drops off the Wi-Fi and comes back walks into the same question everyone else is looking at, with its seat and its score intact.
Scoring
A right answer is worth 500 points, plus up to 500 more for speed. The speed half runs down as the clock does: answer the instant the question lands and you take almost all of it, answer as the timer expires and you take almost none.
Two right answers in a row and every correct answer after that carries a further 100-point streak bonus. A wrong answer, or no answer, scores nothing and ends the streak.
Ties share a place, so two players on the same score are both second. The standings show after every question, not only at the end, which is the point — the run home is more fun when everyone can see it.