Gamelist / Qrank

Qrank appeals to the Trivial Pursuit nerd in me. Contained within my head is a font of useless knowledge, so much so that I do considerably well in pop culture quizzes. The trivia contained within this game is presented in such a way that, instead of having the luxury of sitting there and really thinking about what the proper answer for any given question is you are almost forced to try and answer as quickly as possible; the longer you take on any given question means you score lower for a correct answer, so you really need to be able to call up the proper choice as fast as you can.

Here’s how it works: You can only play Qrank once a day. Everybody playing the game is faced with the same hidden board, and you get to choose fifteen questions to try and answer, divided up into various point groups. After you’ve answered your fifteen questions you’re done for the day, and your score is displayed against players from all over the world and can be sorted globally, nationally, by state or by friend. Then you come back the next day for a new round of questions.

But it isn’t really the presentation of the trivia that makes this an amazing game – it’s the trivia itself. I haven’t yet encountered an entire round of trivia where the answers are completely obvious; the selection is so varied that I constantly find myself learning something new almost every time I play. Quite often the questions themselves offer a small hint as to the correct answer, giving you a bit of help in guessing at the right choice if you don’t have a sweet clue what it could be.

With an almost overwhelmingly robust list of achievements to unlock through accomplishing tasks in the game, coupled with the inability to play the game whenever you want creates an obsessive compulsion to jump back in as soon as possible – I’m finding myself awake as soon as their clock rolls over to a new day just to get my fifteen questions in right away.

The game even has a second function in that any player can create a “Live” spot in their locale and up to five players can participate in some light competitive trivia competition. It’s got almost everything you could want for in a trivia game, and it’s free.