EXHAUSTIN

Seven ways to play

Not seven topics — seven different kinds of game. The questions move between them so nothing settles into a rhythm.

• Chain ReactionEvery answer has to link to the last one. A country, then a player from there, then his club.
• Higher or LowerTwo things. Pick the bigger, faster, older or heavier one. You just played this.
• Odd One OutFour things, one impostor. Bonus points if you can say why.
• Last GaspSixty seconds of true or false. Wrong answers cost seconds, not lives.
• Guess the ThingIt comes into focus one clue at a time. Guess early, score big.
• Sort ItFive things. Put them in the right order before the clock goes.
• Daily EXHAUSTINOne puzzle a day, one attempt, the same for everyone. Keep the streak.

The joke it is built on

It was made for an eleven-year-old called Austin, whose name turns out to be hiding inside a surprising number of words. Get one right and it says AUSTINISHING. Get a few in a row and it says un-Austin-able. The hardest setting is called FULLY AUSTINATED. And any time the answer is Australia or Austria, the whole screen goes off and the points double.

It can be made gentler, and it says so

• Three lives, not one wrong answer and out. There is a setting that wins a life back for every right answer.
• The timer comes off entirely if a ticking bar is stressful rather than exciting — or you can just take double the thinking time.
• Stretching is a whole rung below Warm-up, for a five- to eight-year-old: the easy questions and nothing else.

What it does with your data

Nothing leaves the device. No account, no sign-in, no tracking, no analytics — every score, streak and trophy is stored on the thing you played it on. Detail in the privacy policy.