🎯 Goal

Score the most money by answering trivia clues correctly. The player with the highest score at the end wins!

📋 Joining a Game

• Share the room URL (or the QR code) with your friends. The first person to create the room becomes the Host.
• The host controls the game pace — starting category voting, reading clues, adjudicating spoken answers, and advancing rounds.
• A room holds 2–12 players. You need at least 2 to start; a 13th join attempt is rejected ("room full").
• Get everyone into the lobby before the host starts category voting — once voting begins, the room is closed to new joiners for the rest of that game.
• If the host disconnects for a while, host control automatically passes to another connected player — nobody needs to restart the game.
• A host can lock the room with a password (👑 Host Controls); a locked room hides the player list from the join screen until the password is entered.
• Lost your seat (closed the tab, phone died)? Rejoin with the same room link and username — the host will see a request to approve your return.

▶️ Starting a Game

• From the lobby, the host clicks "▶ Vote on Categories" — this is the Start button; there's no separate "Start Game" step. It's disabled until at least 2 players are in the room.
• That immediately moves everyone into Category Voting (see below). Once voting closes, the board is drawn automatically and the game begins — no extra click needed.

🗳️ Category Voting

• Before every board is drawn, all players vote on which topics to play. Browse the category list (or type a new topic to propose it) and tap up to 5 categories each.
• Votes update live — you'll see everyone's tally and who still needs to finish voting.
• The host can close voting at any time, even before everyone has used all their votes.
• Categories are ranked by vote count (ties broken randomly); if not enough categories got votes, the game fills the rest of the list with other topics at random so the board is never short.
• This repeats before every new round's board, so you'll vote again before Double Jeopardy! and any later rounds.

🎮 How a Round Works

• The board shows 6 categories (host-configurable 1–5 clues per category; 5 rows is the full board).
• The active selector chooses a category and value. The clue appears on screen for everyone at the same moment.
• After a brief reading pause, the Buzz Window opens — hit BUZZ IN! as fast as you can. It stays open for 5 seconds; if nobody buzzes, the answer is revealed and the same selector picks again.
• The first player to buzz gets to answer — there's no separate timer for giving your answer. Speak your answer aloud via video/voice chat (e.g. "Who is Abraham Lincoln?"). Typing isn't used here.
• All other players then vote using the on-screen buttons: Answered Correctly or Answered Incorrectly. Voting has no time limit either — the round advances as soon as a majority of eligible voters (everyone except the answerer and any eliminated players) has voted, so it doesn't wait for stragglers.
• If the vote is tied or majority Correct, the answerer earns the clue value and becomes the next selector.
• If the majority votes Incorrect, the answerer loses the clue value and is locked out of that clue — but the buzzer reopens immediately so any other eligible player can steal it. This can repeat until someone gets it right or everyone eligible has been locked out, at which point the answer is revealed and the original selector picks again.

💰 Daily Double

• Hidden on the board are 1 Daily Double (Jeopardy! Round) and 2 Daily Doubles (Double Jeopardy! Round) by default — the host can change this count (0 up to every clue on the board) in Settings.
• Only the player who selected the clue wagers and answers first — no buzzing to start.
• You must wager before seeing the clue: minimum $5, maximum is your current score. If your score is $0 or negative, your only option is the $5 minimum — you can't wager up to the round's top clue value.
• There's no time limit on the wager or the answer — take the time you need.
• Get it wrong and the clue isn't over: it reopens for buzzing, and another player can steal it for its face value (not your wager amount).

📊 Rounds

• Jeopardy! Round — clues worth $200–$1,000 (at the full 5-row board size).
• Double Jeopardy! Round — clues worth $400–$2,000.
• The host can configure 1–3 rounds per game in Settings; extra rounds keep alternating Jeopardy!/Double Jeopardy! value boards before Final Jeopardy!.
• Between rounds a scoreboard is shown; the host advances to the next round (which triggers a fresh category vote first).
• Each new round's first pick goes to whoever has the lowest score (round 1 starts with whoever created the room); after that, turns rotate in join order, skipping anyone disconnected or eliminated.
• Elimination: if your score drops to $1,000 in the red or lower during Double Jeopardy!, you're eliminated — you can no longer buzz, vote, or play Final Jeopardy!/the Tiebreaker, though you stay on the scoreboard.

🌟 Final Jeopardy!

• Only non-eliminated players take part. One final clue — everyone sees the category first and secretly wagers (minimum $0, maximum your current score; a negative score means you can only wager $0).
• Once every remaining player has locked in a wager, the clue appears and each player types their answer (unlike regular rounds, this one isn't spoken).
• There's no hard countdown, but the game waits for everyone before moving on, so submit promptly.
• Answers are graded automatically by the game (not the host) using a fuzzy text match — minor misspellings are forgiven, and you don't need to prefix "What is…"/"Who is…" or a leading "the/a/an", but try to get the key words right since there's no human judgment call here.
• Results reveal one player at a time over about 20 seconds (the host can skip ahead). The player with the highest score after Final Jeopardy! wins! 🏆

🔗 Tiebreaker

• If two or more non-eliminated players are tied for the top score after Final Jeopardy!, a sudden-death clue is played.
• It's buzz-in like a regular clue, but the winner types their answer instead of speaking it.
• Answer correctly and you win the game outright. Answer incorrectly and a brand-new clue is drawn with buzzing open to everyone again — including the player who just missed.

💡 Tips

• For regular clues and Daily Doubles, answers don't need to be perfectly worded — the host (or the voting players) judge correctness and can accept or reject. Final Jeopardy! is the exception: that one is auto-graded on your typed text.
• Watch the buzz timer bar during the Buzz Window — it's the only strict timer in the game, and it closes after 5 seconds.
• Negative scores are possible if you buzz in and get it wrong! In Double Jeopardy!, going $1,000 or more into the negative eliminates you for the rest of the game.
• Use the gear ⚙️ Settings button to adjust sound, rounds, rows per board, and Daily Double count before starting (host only, while still in the lobby).

🎲 How the question pool works

• Questions are drawn from a shared pool. Once a question has been used in this room, it will not come up again in this room — so a long session keeps serving fresh material.
• The pool is tracked per room. Starting a game in a different room gives you the full pool again, including everything already used here.
• The host can wipe this room's used-question list from 👑 Host Controls → Question Pool, which makes every question available in this room again. That cannot be undone.