I built QUIZάκι a few months ago so my friends and I would have something to play when we are all together. It started with 100 questions in 4 categories. Some of my friends learned those by heart, so I started adding questions more seriously. Today there are ~11k.
It spread by word of mouth from one group of friends to the next. It is now opened on more than 100 different devices a day. That was the goal from the start. It is also why QUIZάκι is a website and not an app: anyone can open it on any phone, with nothing to install and no storage to free up. For the same reason it will never have ads or subscriptions.
How a round works #
One phone, two teams. The team that is not playing holds the phone, reads the question out loud and marks the answer right or wrong.
A right answer counts toward that category and keeps the turn. A wrong one passes the phone. The first team to win every category wins, but the other team always gets a last turn to catch up. If they do, the game goes to sudden death.
Before the game you choose how many right answers win a category (1 to 5), the answer time (30, 45 or 60 seconds) and the difficulty. A tap on the timer pauses it. Mixed difficulty keeps the split between easy and hard questions even for both teams.
The questions #
The ~11k questions are spread over 15 categories. Τέχνες is the largest with 2,093, then Ιστορία, Γεωγραφία, Επιστήμη and Αθλητικά with over 1,000 each. Each question is tagged easy, medium or hard.
The fifteenth category, Στο παρά 5, is a special one: 174 questions about the TV series. I added it for a few friends who are obsessed with the show. They also wrote a lot of its questions. It can be picked like any other category or played on its own.
New questions come from me, from friends and from players. The home screen has a Προσθήκη Ερώτησης (add a question) form. Every question has an Έχει λάθος η ερώτηση; (is this question wrong?) button. When a report is right, the question gets fixed. One recent update fixed 13 questions from player reports.
A bank this size collects mistakes, so it gets cleaned in passes:
- Duplicates. A scan found the same question in more than one category. 185 copies were removed, keeping each question in the category that fits it best.
- Facts. A fact-check against sources corrected 100 wrong or outdated answers. Questions with a second valid answer were reworded.
- Within a game. A question never comes up twice in the same game, even if it exists in two categories.
Some answers link to the source that backs them, for the arguments that start after a contested question.
Small things #
- Each team gets its own name and color. The screens follow them.
- Five accent colors for the whole app.
- An interrupted game can be resumed from the home screen.
- It installs to the home screen on iOS and Android, with a step-by-step guide in the app.
- No cookies and no account. Game statistics are anonymous.
Play it #
Open quizaki.xyz, split into two teams and start. The interface and the questions are in Greek. I work on it when I have time and add questions whenever I come across them.
