If you have not heard about this game or have not played it, you are missing out. HQ is a live trivia app- it can be downloaded from the Apple store or Google play- and has games at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on weekdays and 2 p.m. on weekends. The premise of the game is simple; there are 12 trivia questions each game that increase in difficulty. There are three options for each question. Once you miss a question, you are out unless you have an extra life. You get extra lives when new players sign up using your name as a referral, and you can only use up to one of these per game. Each game typically has hundreds of thousands of people that tune in to play, with just a slim minority who end up getting all 12 questions correct. If you do happen to be a lucky winner, you split the prize pool with everyone else who won that game. The prize ranges anywhere from $2,000-$18,000 depending on the day.

What I’ve learned: Here are four of my takeaways after some research with the game.

The app is far from perfect.

If you find yourself trying to check your internet connection while playing HQ, you are not alone. While HQ has been progressive in creating a game that will revolutionize apps in the future, there are still some obvious problems. Since HQ goes live to thousands of people at the same time, the game tends to freeze up on your phone from time to time. Also, HQ has had problems with having to delay game times. After playing the game for nearly a month, I have learned to be patient. At the end of the day, nobody can be too mad about a little lag if it means you have a chance of winning thousands of dollars.

The host and other players are annoying. 

To keep the game lively, HQ has a host for each game. However, these hosts tend to offer pointless commentary or facts I do not care to know. In addition, there is a comments section where some of the people choose to leave comments continually. To combat this, I choose to leave my phone on silent and swipe right on the comments to make them disappear. You cannot afford distractions like this on your pursuit to thousands of dollars.

Playing by yourself can be hard. 

Despite being a bonafide expert on random facts, I find myself scratching my head on questions early on in the game. After you get through the first couple of questions, the questions start becoming difficult, and I have found I tend to fail around this point without the help of others. Despite having an endless amount of information available to search on the web, the 10 second time frame to answer the question makes it impossible to look up the answers. I find that my best bet is to have a group of people help me answer questions regardless of whether they are playing themselves or just merely there to help you answer.

HQ is overall a great app.

I know I may seem rather critical of this app, but this is truly one of the best apps I have ever had, and it is completely free to play! While it is a long shot to win the money, HQ delivers something everyone can look forward to twice a day. I strongly recommend trying this game and since it is free, it is worth a try.