Jeopardy World Tour App: The Good, The Addictive, & the Ugly Privilege

This summer Alan and I found an app we actually both enjoy. Jeopardy World Tour app. We love this thing. Truth be told, Alan keeps saying he’s getting tired of it, but I super hope that’s not true because I just now finally made Tier 8 and have enough tokens to play some bigger cities.

We’ve already pulled so many of our friends and family in to this app.

***When you purchase items through links on my site, I do collect advertising fees.***

The funny and sometimes frustrating thing about this game is that it does not let you waste an entire day playing it, not unless you are truly a trivia genius or you’re feeding it a bunch of money.

Yes, you can play the Jeopardy World Tour app for free.

We try not ever spend any real money on it, and the sad thing is that if you spend all your Jeopardy app money on one expensive city game and lose…no more Jeopardy for your for four more hours. Yep. They pay you more “dollars” every 4 hours. There’s a countdown until your next pay.

Just now I had $160,000 Jeopardy dollars. I spent it all on one game in Paris, and I lost. Now I have to wait four more hours before I can even play again.

Sadness.

When I first started playing, I always played the cheap cities, so this didn’t happen so much. The only thing about that is that when you do it that way, you level up like 100 times  more slowly than you do playing the expensive cities.

But here’s the good news when you’re out of Jeopardy money.

There’s another part of the app where you can play your friends. Don’t have any friends? You can have it match you to opponents. That works just as well. The app gives you 3 hearts every 4 hours, and you use your hearts to play games.

You won’t level up from friend challenges, but you will gain experience knowledge which you can use in your other games. Plus, you can meet the daily challenges, which will give you more money to play the city games.

Gems, Gems, Gems!

You collect gems according to what category you’ve answered correctly. This part is neat because you can click on your profile and learn which category you are best at. For example, I keep around an 80% accuracy level in the vocabulary category, but I’m only around 55% accurate in my literature/arts category.

The gems enable you to level up to different “tiers.” Each tier higher you go, the more money you get every 4 hours.

So you want to hear a funny and ridiculous April and Alan playing Jeopardy story?

All Jeopardy accounts are not created equal. There is some serious UGLY privilege going on here.

Alan was whipping through the level and gem tiers faster than I was, and I was feeling jealous and miffed. See, the thing was that it was completely unequal. His Tier 2 would get like $50,000. My Tier 2 got more like $10,000. What the heck!? And each time Alan would graduate to the next tier, they’d double the money he got! Meanwhile, my amount would go up some paltry amount in comparison.

As we compared our games, I began to feel an extreme sense of injustice. I decided to write the app a letter and demand answers to this privilege situation that we had here. Horribly unfair!

The app people sent me back a message saying that my husband has a “test version” of the app, and that there will be many great changes in store.

Only there were never any changes that created equality amongst the app versions. He continues to get over $300,000 every 4 hours now at Tier 9, and I get $60,000 at Tier 8.

Alan’s mom signed up for an account, and her app version is even worse than mine. She gets paid the same, I think, but her cities will never pay her any more than she pays in. Alan and I get paid extra every time we win with a higher score than some set number.

I did notice that Alan and I are on totally different leader boards though. For example, we could both be #500 at the same time and not see each other on the leader board because we aren’t competing against each other. That is some consolation.

Just know if you download this game, you may get the amazing version that lets you play tons of games, like Alan, OR you could end up with the more limited regular version like me.

When addiction to the app goes too far:

One night Alan was going on an on about all the money he was rolling in and games he’d won, and I reminded him that he had all this privilege though because I don’t even have a chance to play all the games the way he does with the tiny amount of money they were giving me, but still charging me the same amount to play the game.

It all made me truly empathize with every underprivileged person ever. I mean it seems ridiculous, but I got it.

I told Alan he should apologize for bragging or at least admit that he had an unfair advantage. He did not wish to admit his advantage, and I got all kinds of upset!

And that’s how you know that you’ve taken your app obsession too far…. Haa!!! That was months ago, and Alan has since admitted that I and his parents do have the short end of the stick.

So I wholeheartedly do recommend this game because it will keep you sharp, sometimes make you feel stupid, and make you realize just how not-well-read you are. Yet at the same time it is awesome sauce, and it will suck you in and leave you wanting to play more.

For another fun app review, see this one I wrote about Township.

The post Jeopardy World Tour App Review: The Good & The Ugly appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

As much as we’d love to be a Disney family, high tailing it off to Orlando a few times a year, that’s not really practical for most of us, is it? No, and even if you do, there will be plenty of time between to fill up with memories at home.

Here are 3 things I’ve found lately to have a BLAST with my children without spending much money at all and without leaving our house.

4 Almost Free Ways to Spend Time Together as a Family

Board Games

This one can be even cheaper than you think. I buy almost all of our games at Goodwill or other local thrift stores. Part of Daniel’s birthday gift this year was an Angry Birds game I found for $3.95 at Goodwill. Maybe $3.95 doesn’t sound cheap, but when you figure the whole family could play it, it was in perfect condition, and retail it would have been more like $34, it starts to sound like a steal.

This morning we paid Spongebob Monopoly, and while 3 of 4 boys quit early on from boredom, Daniel hung in there and beat me SOUNDLY.

So did everyone have fun? Sort of. Everyone did for a little while. And one of them had the special honor of beating mom. Also, he learned so much about counting money and making change.

Playing Sports Outside…..and yeah, sometimes inside

What we play depends on what they are into at the time. Last year it was always baseball. Now it’s mostly basketball, but lately we’ve been all about badminton.

Here’s my best tips for introducing your kids to badminton or tennis:

1. Buy any racquets at thrift stores. Thrift stores almost always have tennis rackets, and when you are playing at home, you can totally play badminton with big giant tennis rackets. In fact, it makes it easier for the kids to hit the birdie.
2. If you don’t have a net, designate a line on the driveway as your “net”. By the way, the one above is a nice one. You can also buy super cheap ones, but I can’t vouch for how good they will be, but they might be better than just the line on the driveway. Ha!
3. Our family just used the crack in the driveway as our “net” until we had time to go buy a net.

Most sports can be simulated at home without actually owning the equipment. In most cases, you just need a ball.

ABSOLUTELY FREE: CHARADES!!!

Alan took some papers, cut them into squares and wrote names of people we know, movies we’ve watched, and places we’ve been to on them. Then he made a paper bag for each category, and put the papers in the bags for us to draw out.

The boys LOVED it. It was more personal this way. We used family members, and then they’d act out what they’ve noticed about those family members. The cutest was when they were being their cousin Wesley, and they got on their knees, to show they were short, and then went around hugging everyone! Ha!!!

For places, we used random ones like the driveway, the pumpkin patch, and places we used to live. Just talking about it makes me want to do this again. We all laughed so much.

Include the little ones too. Just whisper in their ear how to act it out. As long as there’s one person to guess, you’re good. When toddlers get involved, I promise it will be hilarious. They may even announce to everyone who they are being, like JD does, and that’s okay.

Turn something they LOVE into a family activity!

Light sabers? Family jousting tournament

Legos? Building contest! And name a different prize for each kid. Maybe even make little construction paper ribbons.

Dancing? Dance Party.

For example, the ever so obnoxious BOTTLE FLIPPING!!

Does any mom or teacher out there not hate this activity? Why? It’s loud. It’s annoying, and it always spills water.

Did you know they make games for Bottle Flipping? As in board-game like games? They do!

 
I decided to give this a shot. This is the very first time I had ever attempted to flip a bottle, and I’m here to tell you it is way HARDER than it looked! I have new respect.

Best of all, my older boys got a real kick out of me participating in bottle flipping with them. My oldest wasn’t even going to play with us at first, but once he saw us having fun, he joined in and then insisted that we play again.

In fact, I want you all to join in on this fun, so this week we are giving the Bottle Flippin’ Game away for FREE to one of you!

***This giveaway is sponsored by the Bottle Flip Game.***

I love giveaways!!!

To enter just Log in with Facebook or your email below, and click one of the options. If you have trouble, just send me your email address, and I’ll enter ya.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck!!!

The post 4 Almost Free Ways to Spend Time Together as a Family + Giveaway appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.