About HexQuiz

HexQuiz is a quiz game for iOS and Android in which a question is almost never just a list of four answers. Ten different formats ask you to sort, group, match, assign and estimate as well as choose, across seven fields of knowledge, 174 categories and five levels of difficulty.

The main mode

The mode the game is named after is a ladder of five rounds. Each round is seven questions, and each rung is harder than the one below it: round one is Beginner, round five is Genius. Clear half the points available in a round and the next rung opens; fall short and the run ends there. Your score is the sum of the rounds you cleared, so a run is the question of how far up you got before the questions outgrew you.

The climb changes character as it goes. In the early rounds you answer from what you know. By the fourth and fifth, the questions assume a specialist, and clues stop being an optional extra and become the way through — the points you spend on them are the price of reaching a rung you could not have reached unaided. Deciding which clue to buy, on which question, is most of what the upper rounds actually test.

What makes it different

• Ten question formats, not one. Multiple choice is one of ten. The others ask you to put things in order, split them into groups, pair them up, fill a grid, or place a pin on a number line — so knowing a fact is rarely enough on its own.
• Help costs what you are playing for. Every question carries three clue tiers priced at 50, 100 and 150 points, paid out of the score that question is still worth. Taking a clue is a wager, not a free hint.
• The honeycomb is the interface. Menus, the question, the answers, the clue cards, the timer and the score all sit on one continuous grid of hexagons that turns and flips as you play.
• Every question is argued afterwards. The reveal between questions does not only mark you right or wrong — it explains each answer, including the ones you did not pick.
• Nothing to sign up for. No account, no login, no cloud profile. Your history stays on your device.

The numbers

How a round works

A question opens with its subject shown as a breadcrumb — domain, discipline, category — and its difficulty as five stars. It is worth 1,000 points, and a timer takes one point per second: 100 seconds on a multiple-choice question, 200 on the interactive boards, which take longer to work.

Clue cards become available as the clock runs, after 5, 10 and 15 seconds. Buying one costs points from that question's own total. Scoring rules differ by format: multiple choice is right or wrong, while the boards that hold many items award partial credit, so getting most of a sort or a grouping right is worth most of the points.

Between questions a reveal panel explains the answer, and at the end of a round a score screen replays every question and awards a medal. A medal in a category unlocks the next difficulty in that same category, so progress is made subject by subject rather than as one global level.

• Quiz LibraryAll 174 categories and what to expect from each
• Game ModesThe ladder, trophies, the daily challenge and multiplayer
• Question TypesAll ten formats, each with a worked example
• DifficultyFive levels, what each assumes, and how they unlock
• The Clue SystemThree tiers, what they cost and what they give you
• Free to PlayAds, keys and what a subscription changes
• FAQPlatforms, languages, accounts and scoring