Google has just launched a new trivia game – A Google a Day – to the delight and perhaps even to the dismay of trivia lovers. Normally, when you quiz someone about their knowledge of historical facts, literary figures, capitals, sports champions, and other minutiae, the rules are “no cheating.” No looking up the answer in books. And certainly no Googling.
But the Google a Day puzzle encourages you to do just that, use the search engine to find the answer.
According to Google’s “anthropologist of search” Daniel Russell, the company recognizes the importance of play in learning a new skill and with that has created a game “that would engage people in a playful way to learn how to search.”
A Google a Day, like many newspaper crossword puzzles, will get progressively more difficult as the week goes one, each one really testing your ability to come up with the right keywords and search query to locate the answer.
So that thousands of people trying to find that answer and tweeting about it don’t skew real-time search results, the game will be run via “Deja Google,” “a wormhole inspired time machine that enables you to solve today’s puzzle spoiler free by searching the Internet as it existed before A Google a Day launched.” In other words, your search will be limited to the days before the question is posted, so you won’t come across a spoiler.
You can still “cheat” by opening up another tab to search Google. Or by using another search engine, I suppose.
