Lightning Quiz

Lightning Quiz is a game show that fits in your hand. Spotlights sweep the stage, the audience waits in the dark and Hootz, a brass-and-steel owl in a red bow tie, stands at the podium with one wing over the buzzer. A question drops onto the glass card in the middle of the screen, a lightning bolt starts eating its way round the edge of it, and four big panels light up underneath. Pick one. Green and a bell, or red and a groan from the crowd — and either way Hootz tells you why the answer was what it was.

There are four ways to play. The lightning round gives you sixty seconds and as many questions as you can get through, with a streak multiplier that climbs to five times and a wrong answer that costs you three seconds off the clock. A category round is ten questions from one of ten subjects with twelve seconds each. The Daily 10 is the same ten questions for everyone on a given day, once a day, with a streak for coming back. Hot seat sits two players side by side on one device, taking turns, with both scores up on the board.

Every round hands you two lifelines: fifty-fifty knocks out two wrong answers, and freeze stops the clock dead for five seconds while you think. The bank holds three hundred and thirty questions across geography, animals, science, maths, space, sport rules, food, music, language and history, at three levels of difficulty, and each one comes with a line explaining the answer, so a fast round is also a few things learned. Tap the panels, or drive the whole thing from the keyboard: one to four or A to D to answer, F for fifty-fifty, Z for freeze. Scores and your daily streak are kept in your browser.