What is this popular new app that has everyone discretely ignoring their teachers in class? It’s “Trivia Crack,” an interactive game that tests your knowledge on several subjects while playing against your friends. Released late in 2014, it quickly topped the charts with a rate of 500,000 downloads per day in the United States.

“Trivia Crack” seems to have been successful because it pinpoints the perfect balance of everything that makes a good game. It’s challenging, but not unreasonable, and you can play interactively with friends through Facebook.

“[The questions] are not impossible to answer. If it were harder I’d probably want to give up sooner,” junior Mena Garwood said.

The game itself is also fairly self explanatory. You pick an opponent and spin the wheel when it’s your turn. The wheel will stop on one of seven spaces: science, geography, history, sports, entertainment, art, or crown.

If you land on the crown you can automatically answer for a character, otherwise you try to correctly answer a question in one of the six remaining categories.

“I like learning new stuff, and I like to answer the science questions, because it tests me,” senior Hannah Simons said.

If you get it right, you answer another question, and once you’ve reached three correct answers, you can choose any of the six categories to answer one more question and receive a character. The first player to get all the characters wins the game.

So what makes this game so addictive? Frequent users of “Trivia Crack” believe winning has a lot to do with the urge to play.

“I like to beat my friends, so I guess winning makes it addictive,” sophomore Taylor Sheffield said.

“I never win when I play, but if I won games, I would play a lot more often,” Simons said.

Teachers at AHS have even begun to challenge their students, and vice versa.

“I love playing Ms. Reaser even though I lose every time. I heard that another English teacher was using it as extra credit and I love that idea,” Garwood said.

Perhaps the only down side of Trivia Crack is the constant stream of ads that pop up in between games. Players can download the full game for $2.99, which would eliminate all ads. Most players, though, decide against paying the extra fee. One ad in particular has sparked heated debate among users.

An ad for “Game of War,” a new app whose commercial stars Kate Upton riding around on a horse, has produced the most complaints.

Players don’t appreciate the fact that it doesn’t let you skip the ad for a certain number of seconds. About half the tweets under #TrivaCrack are rants about Kate Upton’s scandalous appearance, accompanied by pictures of the ad.

“Trivia Crack makes me want to get Game of War even less” @emma28lee tweeted.

Trivia Crack has gotten millions of Americans and Albemarle students hooked within a few months, and is expected to release a second version of the game mid-year. This includes more questions and categories, and possibly an opportunity for players to create questions for their opponents.

However for now, Trivia Crack continues to sweep through the school like an epidemic, affecting both students and staff.