Savage Questions
IT’S ABOUT 3:30 P.M. ON A WEDNESDAY IN FEBRUARY, AND some 700,000 people are anxiously waiting for Scott Rogowsky to show up. As the minutes tick by, their anticipation lights up their smartphone screens at an increasingly frantic pace. But Rogowsky is hunched over a laptop in SoHo cramming for the upcoming trivia game he’s about to host. (By the time he gets to it, about a million players will have logged on.) He’s quiet and focused until he isn’t: “What did Dr. Robotnik do?” he asks incredulously, referring to the fictional villain from the Sonic the Hedgehog video-game series.
The typical preshow routine for Rogowsky, one of the hosts of the wildly popular HQ Trivia, isn’t usually so rushed. For the uninitiated, HQ Trivia is a live game show that people can play and watch via a mobile app. The free game doles out a cash prize for all contestants who correctly answer 12 questions in a row, but players are given only 10 seconds to answer. The money pot usually fluctuates somewhere around $2,000, though it has been as high as $50,000. The prize is split evenly among all the winners, leaving some champions with just a few dollars and luckier victors with thousands, depending on how many winners they’re sharing it with. HQ games usually air like clockwork
