Hasta La Creative!

My neighbors must have wondered why I was jumping around my living room on Jan. 31. Well, that was the day I finally won the free mobile game “HQ Trivia.” As a former three-time “Jeopardy!” champion, I’d been waiting for years to cash in again on my semi-vast store of knowledge. Yet outside of free beer and the occasional door prize at pub trivia nights, there hadn’t been an opportunity.

When “HQ,” a live trivia game show developed by Vine creators Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll, appeared in the fall of last year, it started a free-to-download mobile app trivia frenzy. I’ve played several of them, and am always blown away by the numbers that appear on the screen: “Cash Show” consistently draws more than 100,000 players and gives away a total of $20,000 a day on weekends ($9,000 on weekdays); “The Q,” a hilariously ramshackle app out of Charleston, South Carolina, gets approximately 10,000 players going for as little as $100 per quiz; “Quiz Biz,” on the popular live-streaming app Live.me, gives away up to $50,000a popto tens of thousands of players. “HQ,” which on Oscar night gave away a total of $50,000 and drew more than 2 million players, has more than 5 million users worldwide, according to Jonathan Briskman, an analyst for Sensor Tower.

This is a golden time for seasoned trivia players. Lee DiGeorge, a New York schoolteacher who will appear on this year’s “Jeopardy! Teachers Tournament,” has won “HQ” 12 times for a total of $473, “Quiz Biz” six times for another $274, and other apps several times for smaller payouts. While that’s no fortune, it’s enough for him to keep a spreadsheet of his wins and losses.

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