Are you a HQ Trivia fan who is also a shameless cheater? Then we have some exciting news for you. A Canadian web developer has created a bot that can present players with a number of likely answers for each question, thus increasing their chances of walking away with prize money.
The “HQ Trivia Assistant” bot is the brainchild of 33-year-old Mike Almond. According to Slate, the program is able to pull the questions from HQ Trivia’s interface and then enter the transcript into Google and Yahoo. Once the search results are pulled up, the bot then searches each link’s preview text for words that are also in each answer option. The HQ Trivia assistant then presents the user with a breakdown of which answer is more likely to be correct. It’s all based on percentage points.
Because HQ Trivia is played by millions of people around the world, the game heavily relies on the honor system. Of course, many people attempt to Google the correct answers themselves; however, the HQ Trivia Assistant can execute this scheme at an inhuman speed. Slate reports the bot can pull the query, enter the transcript, and suggest the correct answers even before the questions appear on most people’s screen. But it’s not exactly flawless.
The HQ Trivia Assistant doesn’t do well when presented with numerals, such as dates, which means there is a way for the app’s programmers to trick the bot. In initial tests conducted by the Daily Beast, the assistant was able to correctly answer questions about 90 percent of the time. But after the publication contacted HQ about the bot, it noticed that the assistant’s accuracy rate fell to about 40 percent.
Furthermore, Almond claims he has never won a HQ game, even with the bot he created. But it’s not like he really cares about winning … or potentially making money off of it.
“I haven’t done this for any other games,” he told the Daily Beast, “this one was just to see how it works. I am not into making money or anything out of it, I like to see things how work and I use it as a teaching moment.”
