BrainBuzz is a game night you can run in about 30–45 minutes. One person hosts on a phone or laptop and picks one of three games — a trivia board on the TV, a quiz on everyone's phone, or a set of small puzzles with no trivia in them at all.
Teams pick clues off a 6×5 grid and buzz in. Daily Doubles, wagers and a Final Round. Phones are optional — the host can run the whole game from one screen while everyone shouts out answers.
Best for: family nights, parties, a classroom with one shared screen.
Everyone answers the same multiple-choice question at the same time, on their own phone. Faster correct answers score more, streaks build, and the scoreboard moves between every question. One phone per player is required.
Best for: classrooms, bigger groups, anyone who already knows this style of game.
Fourteen small puzzles — Sudoku, Zip, 2048 Sprint, a memory flash, a sliding puzzle and more — one at a time, about 30–45 seconds each, scored on how fast you finish. No trivia at all, so knowing things is no advantage. One phone per player is required.
Best for: mixed rooms, a group with no shared interests, anyone who never wins at trivia.
You choose the format when you make the game — the instructions below cover all three, and say which is which.
On the home page tap Create game room — you'll be asked to sign in first, which is free. You'll get a 4-letter room code, and that code is how players and the TV join.
The first question in the Board step is What kind of game? — 🎲 Jeopardy board, ⚡ Quiz (phones) or 🧠 Brain Games. Answer that first: everything underneath follows it, including which of your saved boards you see and what the public library shows you.
Then pick where it comes from — ✨ AI, 📚 My boards, 🔭 Public or ✏️ Build my own:
In step 👥 Teams create a team per group. In step 📺 Screen you'll find the TV link and a QR code — put the TV on that page and players scan the QR to join and pick a team.
Playing with someone who doesn't have a phone? Tap + member on a team and type their name — they'll show on the team (marked 👤) without needing to join. Tap any name to move them to another team or take them out.
Brain games are fourteen small puzzles. Each takes about 30–45 seconds and scores on how fast you finish, with partial credit for getting part of the way. Like a quiz, there are no teams and everyone needs their own phone.
On your phone, a round ends when you say so — or when there is nothing left to decide.
Want another set? When the last round finishes, the podium has a 🔁 Play another round button. It deals fresh puzzles from the same games and starts the scores from zero. The AI-written rounds keep their questions, so a second set costs no credit.
Good for a mixed room in a way trivia is not: nothing here is general knowledge, so the person who wins every quiz has no advantage at all, and somebody who never wins one can win the night.
A quiz skips steps 3 and 4 — there are no teams and no board to set up. Everyone plays as themselves, so all you need is a phone in each hand:
Prefer it hands-free? Tick Play automatically before you start and the quiz runs itself: each question appears, waits a few seconds for the room to read it, opens the clock, reveals, shows the scoreboard and moves on. You set the reading time and the gap between questions on the same panel — a chatty room wants longer.
Two controls stay on screen the whole game, in the same place:
Want to double-check the questions before you start? Open 📋 Manage your boards from your account page and press 🔎 Fact-check on it there. It has to be done before you load the board into a room, because the questions can't change mid-game.
The quickest route is one of the Quick setup presets — Family, Competitive or Classroom — which set everything below in one tap. To fine-tune, open More options:
Then press ▶ Show board on TV & start. The board stays hidden from the TV until you do.
Tap a dollar value to open a clue — only your screen shows the answer. Read it out loud, open the buzzers, then tap ✓ Correct or ✗ Wrong. Tapped the wrong one? ↩ Undo appears beside the board and reverses the last ruling completely — the points, the lockout, and whose clue it was. Setup tabs hide while you play so you can't mis-tap them — timers and turn order live under ⚙️ Game settings on the clue card, and ⚙️ Setup at the top brings the tabs back if you need to fix a score or re-show the QR.
When the clock runs out (Take-turns mode) nothing is scored automatically — the TV shows ⏰ TIME'S UP and you decide: ✓ Correct if they got it in just under the wire, ✗ Wrong to deduct and offer the steal, or Reveal so nobody scores.
Steals — after a wrong answer in Take-turns mode, the next team gets one shot on a shorter clock. Tap ✓ Stole it, ✗ Wrong, or Pass. If their clock runs out it just counts as passing — no penalty. Turn order carries on as if the steal never happened.
When the board is done, run the 🏁 Final Round — teams wager and answer on their phones, or tell you their wager and answer and you type both in for them — or press End game. Winners appear on the TV and board setup reopens on your screen so you can start the next game.
Scan the QR code on the TV, or go to the address shown there and type the 4-letter room code plus your name. No app, no account.
No phone, or nobody's joining on one? That's fine — the host can add you to a team by name and run everything from their screen. You still play exactly the same way: watch the TV and answer out loud. The rest of this page describes what a phone adds, so skip whatever doesn't apply to you.
There are no teams — you play as yourself, and you need your own phone.
Read the question off the TV. Your phone deliberately shows only four coloured shapes, not the answer text, so look up. Tap the shape that matches the answer you want.
Faster is worth more, but knowing is worth most. A correct answer never scores less than half, so it's better to be right than to be first. Get several right in a row and a 🔥 streak starts paying a bonus on top. A wrong answer scores nothing and resets the streak — it never costs you points.
You only get one tap per question, so it can't be changed once it's in. Between questions you'll see whether you were right, what you scored, and your place — with an ▲ or ▼ if you moved.
No teams, no trivia, and you need your own phone. Everything happens on the phone — the TV just shows the rules and the scores.
Each round puts a puzzle in front of you for about 30–45 seconds. How to work it is written on your screen for the whole round, under the puzzle, so there is nothing to remember and nothing to ask about: tap a cell to cycle it, drag to draw a path, swipe to slide the tiles.
Nothing is sent by accident. ↩ Undo takes back your last move and Reset puts the puzzle back to how it started — use them freely. A puzzle sends itself only when your phone can tell you have it right — Lights Out, the sliding puzzle, Zip, and the pattern, colour and memory games. It waits a couple of seconds, says so on screen, and Undo cancels it. The rest wait for Submit: Sudoku, the ordering and word games and Math Sprint. Your phone is never told those answers, so it cannot know a full grid is a correct one. (2048 Sprint has no Submit at all — its board lives on the server, so every move already counts.)
You are scored on what you did, not just on finishing. Submit and you score for how much you got right and how fast; if the clock beats you, you still score for whatever was on your screen, just without the speed bonus. Half a Sudoku is worth half a Sudoku.
2048 Sprint is the odd one out and says so on screen: it can't be finished in the time, so it scores on the highest tile you reach. It is also the only game with no Undo and no Submit: the board lives on the server, so every move already counts and the round ends at the buzzer.
Tap a team to join it. Everyone on a team shares one score, so several people can sit together on the same team.
Want your face on the big screen? Tap 📷 Add your photo — it shows next to your team on the TV and on the winners' podium. Totally optional, and the photo is only kept for this game.
Watch the clue on the TV. When the host opens the buzzers your phone shows a big Buzz button — first team in gets to answer. Answer out loud, not on your phone.
Guess wrong and your team loses those points and is locked out of that clue, so only buzz when you know it. In Turns mode there's no buzzer — your phone tells you when it's your team's turn.
Playing without phones? Shout, raise a hand, or slap the table — the host decides who was first and scores your team from their own screen. Take-turns mode suits this best, because turns come round in a fixed order and there's nothing to race for.
If the team whose turn it is gets it wrong, your team may be offered the steal — your phone says 🥷 Steal it! and you get a short clock. Answer out loud: get it right and you take the points, get it wrong and you lose them, or just pass and the answer is revealed. Letting the clock run out counts as passing, so there's no penalty for staying quiet.
Without phones the host simply says whose steal it is, and you answer out loud as usual.
Land on a Daily Double and only your team plays it — you'll enter a wager on your phone first, or just tell the host and they'll enter it for you. If you're stuck, ask the host for a hint; a hinted clue is worth half points, and each team only gets a few.
Everyone wagers up to their score, sees the clue, and types an answer on their phone. Answers lock in, then the host reveals them one at a time. Big wagers can flip the whole game.
Without phones it works the same, just out loud: tell the host your wager before the clue, then write your answer on paper or say it when they come to you, and they type it in. Answers are still revealed one team at a time, so nobody hears anyone else's before they've committed.
If your TV has a web browser, go to this site/tv and type the 4-letter room code from the host's screen. That short address is all you have to enter on the remote — the host console shows the same address and code under step 📺 Screen. This is the most reliable option: nothing stays connected, so nothing can drop mid-game.
Codes never contain the letters I, L, O or U, or any digits, so a 0 you typed becomes an O automatically.
Open the TV board in Chrome on a laptop, then use Cast → Cast tab to send it to a Chromecast or built-in Chromecast TV. Casting from a phone often only mirrors video, so a laptop works better.
An HDMI cable from a laptop always works and never drops mid-game.
Press Fullscreen in the corner of the TV page. The board, the join QR code, and the scores all size themselves to the screen.
A second screen is optional. In step 📺 Screen tick No TV — play on this screen and the host console stops asking for one. You can run the whole game from your own device, or press Open the board window to pop the board into its own window and drag it onto a projector or a mirrored screen while you keep the console in front of you.
Quiz — points, not dollars, and everyone scores for themselves.
Jeopardy — dollars, and teams share a score.
Brain games — the quiz's points, earned by finishing rather than by knowing.
No. Players just open a web page on their phone and type the room code. The host needs a free account; players and the TV need nothing at all.
Jeopardy — up to 6 teams, with as many people per team as you like. Teams of 2–4 work best. Quiz and brain games — up to 40 players, each on their own phone; 10–12 is the comfortable size for one room.
Pick Jeopardy if you want the game-show feel, want teams, or can't rely on everyone having a phone — it's the only one of the three that runs without them. Pick Quiz if you want everyone answering at once, individual scores, and a faster game. Pick brain games if the room has nothing in common: there is no general knowledge in them at all, so nobody is at a disadvantage for not following sport, or films, or the news. A quiz of 10 questions takes about 10 minutes, brain games about the same, and a full board 30–45.
Almost never. In Jeopardy it's only the Final Round; everywhere else players answer out loud and the host decides, which keeps the game fast and forgiving about spelling. In Quiz they never type — they tap one of four shapes. In brain games they never type either: everything is a tap, a drag or a swipe on the puzzle itself.
They rejoin with the same room code and name, and their team keeps its score. The host's screen is the source of truth — if the host reloads, the game continues.
A ruling, yes — ↩ Undo reverses the last one outright, points, lockout and all, and it's the quickest fix for a mis-tap; the team score + / − buttons in the Teams step cover anything else. A wrong CLUE has to be fixed before the game: open 📋 Manage your boards from your account page and use ✏️ Edit clues there, since the questions can't change once a game is running.
Occasionally. Every generated board is fact-checked automatically, but skim the answers before you play — open it under 📋 Manage your boards on your account page, where 🔎 Fact-check re-runs the check and ✏️ Edit clues lets you fix anything yourself.
It's deliberately opportunity, not charity — nobody is handed points for being behind. A trailing team simply gets a bigger lever (a larger Daily Double wager, and a Final wager of up to the whole pot) and still has to answer correctly to use it. The leader's own limits are unchanged. If your group prefers strict rules, the host can turn it off in ⚙️ Game settings.
Yes: see BrainBuzz for classrooms. Short version — students need no accounts and no devices, there's a one-tap Classroom preset, and the shared library already has boards for common units.
Yes — a phone is optional for players. Add a team per group, then use + member to put people on a team by name. In Take turns mode nobody needs to buzz at all; in Buzzers mode the host can award or dock any team with one tap. Daily Double and Final wagers can be entered by the host, and in the Final you can type in what each team answered. The only thing phones add is players buzzing for themselves and typing their own Final answer.
Only you. Saved boards are private to your account — nobody else can list them, open them or delete them. To share one, open 📋 Manage your boards from your account page and press 🌍 Publish: that puts it in the public gallery where any signed-in account can play it or save a copy, credited to your display name or to "Anonymous", whichever you pick. You can make it private again at any time, from the same page.
Yes. Pick the language in the host console and the TV and players' phones follow. You can also generate a board in Spanish — the clues and answers are written in Spanish rather than translated afterwards.
A room closes automatically after two hours in which nobody does anything, so abandoned games don't linger. Anything at all — picking a clue, adding a team, a player joining — resets that clock, so a long quiz night is never at risk. Your saved boards are unaffected; just start a new game.
They're only kept for that game, in memory on the server — never saved to disk. When the room ends they're gone. Adding one is entirely optional.
Yes — generated boards save automatically and appear under Saved boards. Played it already? 🎲 Generate new questions in the Board step keeps the categories you chose and writes a fresh set of questions under them, saved as a new board so the one you played is untouched — one AI credit, and it has to be done before the first clue is opened. Anything that comes back the same as last time is rewritten again rather than just flagged. AI also avoids repeating answers from recent games.