Playing with friends
Everyone plays on their own phone, all at the same time. Press Open a room, make it private if you want it to yourselves, and read out the four letter code. Your friends sign in on their phones, type the code under Have a code? and press Play next game.
The countdown gives everyone five seconds to get in, then the same question goes to every phone at once. Up to twelve people fit in a room. A tablet or a computer works too.
Rooms
Every room runs its own game. Pick one on the Rooms page and go in. A room holds up to twelve people, players and watchers together, and may seat fewer players than that; the rest watch. A private room is off the list and you go in with its four letter code.
Every room plays a theme: Everything, or one broad subject such as Science and Nature, History, Geography, Bible, Screen and Music, Food and Drink, or Words and Books. A theme mixes the categories that belong to it, so a History game can ask about a scientist or a painter too. The theme is on the room's card and above every question, with the question's category and how hard it is. A theme with too few questions yet shows as coming soon.
To play a theme, tap it under What do you want to play? at the top of the Rooms page. You go straight into a room playing it, or a new one opens for it. Inside a room, anyone in line for the next game can press Vote on the theme in the lobby. The theme with the most votes when the countdown ends is the one the next game plays, and you can change your vote until then. Pick a theme while you are only watching and you are put in line with your vote in.
Anyone signed in can open a room of their own with Open a room: its name and colour, how many people it holds, how many of them play, whether it is private, and its theme. The one who opened it changes those from inside with Room settings. One room each; it closes by itself once nobody has been in it for 30 seconds. Every room but Main Stage does, an admin's too.
Casino
A Casino room plays with tokens instead of points. Everyone starts each game with 25 tokens. Before every question, each player who still has tokens pays one token to see the category, and the pot holds those tokens. A wheel of categories spins and stops on one, such as Bible Trivia, Space or Country Music.
Then you wager, from nothing up to all your tokens, on how sure you are of that category. Get the question right, or call a made up one, and you win your wager back plus the same again, and share the pot with everyone else who got it right. Get it wrong and you lose your wager. Say I don't know and you lose only the token you paid to see the category. A pot nobody wins carries on to the next question.
Most tokens at the end wins. Run out of tokens and you can still answer, but you are out of the hands. Find Casino as a tile at the top of the Rooms page, or pick Casino when you open a room.
Watching
Go into a room and you are watching; sign in first. You see every question as the players do, the answers and the scores when they are revealed, and the podium at the end. Everyone watching is named on the page.
Playing a game
Sign in and press Play next game. You are in line, and one player is enough: a countdown of five seconds starts as soon as anyone is in line, so others can join before the first question. When it ends everyone in line is seated, up to the room's number of players. The rest wait for the game after. Press Leave the line to step out before it starts.
A game already under way? Press Join in in the top corner. You sit down when the next question starts, at zero points, and play the rest of the game. If every seat is taken by people, you wait for one to free up. Once the last question is out, the button says Play next game instead. If you left the game earlier, joining again gives you back your seat and your score.
You can play a whole game on your own. It runs like any other, and it ends early only if nobody is left in it.
After a game you stay in for the next one unless you press Leave, or you answered nothing all game, in which case you are moved back to watching.
The ten questions
Each question has four answers, A to D, and twenty seconds. Tap one. You can change your answer by tapping another until time is up; your last tap counts, and the faster it is the more it scores. The question ends early once everyone seated has answered.
About one question in four is made up. It reads exactly like a real one, with four answers that all look possible. Nothing about it gives it away.
Call it
The fifth button says Call it. Tap it instead of an answer when you think the question is made up. A right call scores like a right answer, plus 250 extra points. Calling a real question costs 250 points. Picking an answer on a made up question counts as a wrong answer.
Scoring
A right answer, or a right call, scores 1000 points if you tap at once, falling evenly to 500 at the deadline. A right call then adds 250 more. A wrong answer costs half of what a right one would have scored at that moment: 500 at once, falling to 250 at the deadline. Not sure? Press I don’t know, above the four answers: it scores 0 and costs nothing. No answer scores 0 too. There is no streak bonus.
The three awards
Every podium hands out three awards. Fooled you goes to the made up question that caught the most players. Sharpest eye goes to the player with the most right calls. Fastest finger goes to the quickest average right answer, with at least three right answers to count. A game played alone hands out Fooled you only, and first place in it is not counted as a win on the leaderboard. Every game you answer in counts on the leaderboard, even one you leave before the end; only a finished game with two or more players can be a win.
Backing a player
Signed in watchers who are not seated can back a player on each question: who gets it right. A made up question counts as right for a player who calls it. Each player has a price, set by the house from that player's record and rounded to hundredths; back Mere at 1.60 with 10 Chips and you get 16 back if Mere is right. The house keeps ten percent. One bet per watcher per question.
Backing the winner
Once the countdown is running with two or more in line you can also back one player to win the whole game. That book closes when question one is sent and pays out at the podium. A tie for first pays every tied player. With one player there is no winner book, and if a game falls to one player every bet on the winner is refunded. Bets on each question stand either way.
The bet window
The window for each question is open for the first eight seconds after the question appears. The timer bar turns gold while it is open. Until it closes, watchers are not told who has answered.
Chips and the weekly pay
Chips are play currency. They cannot be bought, cannot be cashed and are worth nothing outside the game. Every account is paid 100 Chips each Monday at midnight in Denver, and unspent Chips add up. The stake comes out when you place a bet and the winnings go back in when it settles. A bet is refunded if the backed player leaves before the question ends, if a question is skipped, or if a game is abandoned.
New accounts
Sign in with your tektology.com account: one account for every Tektology game, with Google, Steam or a passkey, and no passwords. A new account can play and bet in Dunno as soon as it signs in; nobody has to approve it.
One device at a time
An account plays from one window at a time. Opening the game in a second window takes over from the first. If your connection drops mid game your seat is kept for a minute, and coming back on any device with the same account takes it back.
Sound
The game is silent unless you turn sound on. Then it plays the countdown, the reveal and the final, and the menus click softly as you point at them and press them. The speaker button in the top bar switches it, and so does Settings.
Controls
Tap or click as usual. On a keyboard the arrow keys move a gold cursor from button to button, Enter presses and Esc goes back. A game controller works the same way: the pad or the left stick moves the cursor, A presses and B goes back. A small sign in the corner shows which is which while you use them.
Reporting a question
After a reveal, signed in players and watchers can press Report this question in the answer box and pick what is wrong: a real question can be false or have the wrong answer, a made up one can be real. Missed it? When the game ends, Report a question on the final screen lists every question of that game. Reports go to the admins, who check the question.