Hurry! Here’s How You Can Get An Extra Life in the iOS Trivia Game HQ

If you haven’t downloaded the live-streaming trivia game, HQ, you need to do so immediately.  I’m hooked.  Honestly.  If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written, I tend to lean to the skeptical side of things.  But when I’m in – I’m in 100%.  Like I said, I’m hooked on HQ.  I don’t make it very far, but I’m determined to go the distance.  Why?  Because there is real, live, money on the line.  But in order to do that, you have to get all the questions correct.  The questions get harder and harder, so it’s kind of difficult to get them right.  Unless you have an extra “life”, that is.  But the only way you can get an extra life is by referring a friend to the game.  Anyone who has won says that this is an essential part of getting to the final question.

But there’s a secret bug.  Mashable discovered a bug that lets you spoof the system into getting an extra life.  All you have to do is open the app, go to the home page, and swipe up repeatedly from the bottom with two fingers.  You should see an extra life pop up almost instantly.  Before I go too far with this one – who comes up with these things?  But here’s the sad thing – it actually works.  I tried it myself and I swear to you that it works.  Which means, you should all watch out tonight at 9 pm EST.  If you keep swiping (like I did), you won’t be able to get any additional lives. But one is better than none.

You will need to do this quickly as I’m sure they are trying to figure out how to fix this.  Giving away extra lives is definitely going to hurt their strategy.   If you’ve been playing the game, I want to know what you think about it.  Like I said, I’m hooked.  But that’s because I love trivia.  And there are a lot of people playing the game – usually around 400,000 at a time, so the odds are pretty slim that you’re going to make it very far.  What’s also fun about the game is when you see a ton of people get eliminated – like half – but you’re still in the game.  I’m usually on that elimination side of things, so I definitely cheer when these things happen to me.

Right now the winnings average around $1,500, but they have gone up to over $10,000.  And you don’t have to do a lot – except answer some questions right.  I read an article in the Atlantic today where the author suggested that the app “represents some awful, plausible future not yet realized, but just over the horizon: one where expertise isn’t measured by knowledge, but by instinct tripped out on an illusion”.  I kind of agree with the fact that the game tests instinct because you don’t have a lot of time to answer the question.  You barely have enough time to read the answers.  So instead of using your knowledge of a particular subject, you’re testing your instincts.

Processing the question can be difficult also.  There are times that I get caught up on one word and then I have to do a quick math calculation in my brain.  I lucked out with one as I accidentally hit the right answer.  All that being said, I’m still hooked on this game, and like I said I’m determined to make it farther in the game.  I have one extra life for now.  Use the above method to get yours, and hopefully, we will all make it a bit farther in the game.  Good luck to you!