Get Your Daily Trivia Fix With QRANK

Geeks and trivia go hand in hand. Something about obsessing over details more than the average person.

The new social trivia challenge QRANK gives you a venue to show off your geekly prowess. The game can be accessed two ways: via a free iPhone/iPod touch app or Facebook application. Either means gives you equal gameplay.

In QRANK you are presented with a gameboard of 20 tiles representing the four categories du jour. The possible subjects include Science & Nature, Literature, Sports, History & Place, Business & Government, Life, and—my favorite—Entertainment. You select 10 questions to answer in your daily session. Points for each question start at 200, 400, and 1000, depending on difficulty. Point values rapidly decline the longer you wait to answer. To sweeten the pot, there also randomly placed 2X and 3X bonuses.

A few wrinkles make things even more interesting. There are five power-ups that can give you an extra boost. From the game board, there are two options to reveal the categories or bonuses available in one row.  Once you receive a question you have access to three lifelines. These are the same as the popular TV show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” except the Phone-A-Friend is replaced with a timer freeze. All power-ups recharge after use, typically once you’ve answered five questions.

Gameplay is only half the appeal of QRANK. You can also connect with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Sign into either or both of these social networks in the game and you can play against people you know. Additionally you can see how well you score against others in your city, state, nation, or even world. There’s also QRANK Live where you can play face-to-face in various real-world locations but I’ve yet to experience that.

I’ve been playing QRANK for close to a month and have become irrevocably hooked. The app has earned a coveted slot on my iPhone home screen. A daily game takes about five minutes to play. You can even earn Foursquare-esque badges for how well you perform (or don’t) but they’re somewhat pointless.

In a future update to the game I’d like to see some aggregate stats. Your buddy may have scored better than you today but how do your totals compare for the month? The daily gameboard is often overloaded with little leaf icons, a designation for topical questions. Since I don’t always stay up on current events, those questions prove to be extra challenging.

While we might not be able to sit around and play Trivial Pursuit like we used to, we have QRANK to provide the same trivia enjoyment on a daily basis. And the bragging rights are just as sweet.