Romeo and Juliet. Comedy or tragedy? Easy. Now do The Winter's Tale, and do it in about a second, because the next card is already sliding up behind it.
This or That is a sorting game. Every board gives you two labels and eight cards, one at a time, and you flick each card to the side where it belongs. It's one of two new free modes in Trend Trivia® 1.8.0, along with Pair Up, which brings the free bonus modes to eight. Nothing to unlock, no subscription involved.
How a round works
A round is four boards. Each board has a question across the top, like "Which Shakespeare play is it?", a topic chip, and two labels under it, one on the left and one on the right. The cards sit in a stack in the middle of the screen. Only the top one shows its answer, so there's no peeking ahead.
Drag the card toward a side and let go, or flick it, or just tap the label if you'd rather not swipe. The card flies off, the side you chose flashes green or red so you know straight away, and the next card rises into place. Eight dots along the bottom keep count. There's no timer, but the game moves at whatever pace your thumb does, and it tends to speed up on its own.
After the eighth card, a recap card tells you how the board went and lists all eight cards with the side each one belonged on and a short note on why. That's where you find out why, if you weren't sure. Then it's on to the next board.
How scoring works
Every card you put on the right side is worth 100 points. Get all eight and you pick up a 200-point bonus for a clean board, so a clean board is worth 1,000. Four clean boards is 4,000, the most a round can score.
Unlike Pair Up, there's no catch here. Seven of eight is a real score, 700. But that bonus is the difference between a good round and a great one, and it's the thing a single careless flick costs you.
The bar across the top fills in one segment per board. The XP you earn at the end is based on how many cards you got right across the round, and your daily streak multiplier applies on top. A round of This or That also counts as playing for the day, so it keeps your streak alive.
What the results screen tells you
When the round ends you see your total, then four chips, one per board, reading how many of the eight you got. Clean boards turn gold. Under those are your clean-board count and your XP.
Then there's the This round card. It lists each board's two labels with what it scored and eight small bars, one per card, so you can see where in the board you slipped. It's usually near the end, when you've stopped reading and started flicking.
How the boards are made (and why that helps you)
A few of the rules we write by will make you a better player.
- One side per card, nothing to argue. Every card belongs on exactly one side. If a card could reasonably go either way, it doesn't go on a board.
- The split changes. A board might be five and three, or two and six, or four and four. We spread them out on purpose, so you can't count what's gone and work out what's left. Read every card.
- The order is random. Three in a row on one side tells you nothing about the fourth.
- Facts that stay put. No cards that depend on this year's winner, this season's roster or last week's news.
- Plenty of variety. Boards come from 13 topics, from Animals and Space to Language and Sports: mammal or reptile, comedy or tragedy, land or sea.
Tips from playing a lot of it
Read the labels before the first card. It sounds obvious, but a lot of wrong swipes are right answers to the wrong question. "Comedy or tragedy" and "written before or after 1600" need very different things from you.
Slow down for the one you're not sure about. Nothing is timing you. The card will wait. The habit of flicking at the speed of the last four cards is what costs most people their bonus.
Tap when you want to be sure. Swiping is faster and more fun, but tapping the label can't go to the wrong side by accident. On the eighth card of a clean board, tap.
Read the recap. The notes under each card are short and they stick. The next board on that topic is easier if you do.
The Quick Draw badge
Get 10 boards clean, all eight cards right, and you unlock Quick Draw, worth 500 XP. It counts across every round you play, so it'll come with time.
It's one of four badges that came with 1.8.0. The others are Perfect Match for Pair Up, Full House for playing a round of all eight free modes, and Centurion for playing 100 rounds of the free modes in total. That brings the app to 68 badges.
Will you see repeats?
Not for a while. The game keeps track of every board you've played. Boards you've never seen always come first. After those, the ones you didn't get clean come back before the ones you did, and only then does anything cycle around. We're adding new boards all the time.
Where to find it
Update to version 1.8.0 on iPhone or Android, open the app, and look for the This or That tile in the free-mode grid under Solo Play. There are eight tiles there now. The intro screen shows a quick demo, a Land or Sea board with a shark heading the right way, and runs through the rules. After your first round, Play Again skips straight to the first board.
Play This or That
Free for everyone on iOS and Android. Update to Trend Trivia 1.8.0 and find it under Solo Play.
The other free modes
- Pair Up: tap a card, then its partner. Join all four pairs and lock it in.
- Rank It: drag four cards into order, oldest to newest or tallest to shortest.
- Odd One Out: spot the tile that doesn't belong, then name what links the rest.
- Fact or Fiction: real or made up? You find out why either way.
- Spell It Out: guess the answer one letter at a time, with six bulbs to spare.
- Ballpark: slide a ruler to your best guess at a number. Close counts.
- Clue by Clue: who am I? The earlier you call it, the more it's worth.