Sage advice for entrepreneurs often includes the suggestion to focus on a personal need. Guess & Know began as a personal need... of my wife! As the Children's Ministry Coordinator for our church she wanted to finish the school year off with a really fun activity that would get everyone involved. So for a couple of years she printed out pages of categories and point value grids, and adult volunteers kept score on whiteboards, and one parent contributed an electronic buzzer system and all was good. But many aspects of keeping track of the game impeded the momentum which dampened the fun. So I began work on an app for the iPad that she could use as the game host. This early prototype of Guess & Know was used at the end of the 2011-2012 school year and was very successful at improving game flow.

The electronic buzzers helped the game host to know who had buzzed in, but they didn't prevent contestants from buzzing in too early, either by accident or because they were trying to beat others out. That situation was the impetus for Guess & Know Companion. Users of the Companion app can only buzz in once the question has been displayed. And when they do, the host is alerted to who buzzed in first so he or she knows who to call on for the answer. This makes for very smooth game play for both the host and the contestants.

Version History

• Version 1.3, Released March 13, 2013

  Refined user interface in both Guess & Know and Guess & Know Companion

  1. When we realized the extent to which iOS 7 overhauled the user experience, we realized we were going to have to make some significant adjustments ourselves to keep the look of the app consistent with the iOS adornments, so we embarked on a top-to-bottom review and found this was an ideal time to add some ease-of-use features for the host.
  2. You'll notice most of all during game play that the host has on-screen controls for returning to add more players, to pull down the scoreboard and to move between rounds.
  3. We spent a fair amount of time solidifying the communication within the app and out to the Guess & Know Companion players to ensure that there are no surprises during game play.
  4. Lastly, we did build and add in an analytics package to help us help you. Nothing that identifies you personally is ever sent to our analytics server. We only note things like your having used a feature within the app, or that you added a category to a new game. We do not send any of the text that you enter anywhere in the game or names of players or anything like that. Our analytics server does see the publicly-routable IP address but since quite often your use of the game is on a private network, the most we could almost rely on from the IP address that we can see is your geographic location. But other than reward to the development team for discovering that folks in Jakarta are now using the app they labored over, we don't do anything with IP addresses from the analytics server. And if all of this doesn't have you reassured, you can turn off analytics reporting in Settings. That would make our team sad, though... even though they'll never know you turned it off because we don't even report that back to the analytics server!

• Version 1.2, Released June 2, 2013

  Big improvements in both Guess & Know and Guess & Know Companion

  1. We significantly improved the process by which games are advertised and joined. Some wireless networks can be quirky, especially in educational settings where teachers use a different network than students — meaning that student devices couldn't see the game running on the teacher's iPad. In this version we take advantage of Bluetooth networking (if you turn it on on both the iPad that is the game host and the iPad and iPod touch devices that are joining) to aid with the Companion devices discovering the iPad host. Communication during the game still uses your wireless network.
  2. Since this change solely improves discovering a game, and other factors can get in the way, we also now display the actual address of the game on the Gather Players screen (we wait for about 20 seconds before showing this, as Internet Protocol addresses are not everyone's cup of tea). This is matched by a new feature in Guess & Know Companion that allows the player to enter the IP address of the host (again, this feature is hidden for about 20 seconds, but reveals itself if a game host hasn't been selected).
  3. We added the concept of audience age to how the game behaves when a question is answer: For younger audiences the applause features the sounds of younger players whereas older audiences hear more traditional applause.
  4. We also took the opportunity to liven up and soften the response to someone answering a question incorrectly: We now animate on and off the screen a sad-faced character whose facial features are randomly chosen, providing the younger audience with a bit of fun to take the sting out of getting an answer wrong.
  5. In earlier versions you couldn't reshow a question that had already been asked. Starting in this version we allow it: You just tap on the tile representing that question, regardless of the fact that the point value of the question no longer shows. Teachers also told us that it would be helpful to show the category and value of the question while the question is covering up the game board, since sometimes good discussion develops around a question to the point that everyone has forgotten what category they are playing in and what the point value they are playing for is. And if you reshow the question, the point value will be zero so you'll know you're looking at a question that has already been asked.
  6. Version 1.2 also introduced the "Learn More" button on the Welcome screen, which, when tapped, brings you to this website for your convenience.

• Version 1.1, Released March 7, 2013

  Exciting release of both Guess & Know and Guess & Know Companion

  New Features:

  1. Guess & Know Companion is now a universal app, so it is optimized for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices. With the large screen of an iPad, the question that is being displayed on the host iPad and any connected display is also shown on the iPads running Guess & Know Companion. This enhances play in large conference rooms where the presentation device can be hard to read due to distance, glare or equipment inadequacies. We received feedback from meeting planners and teachers that more of their contestants had iPads and wanted an optimized experience in the game.
  2. To speed up your ability to get a game underway we changed the flow that followed selecting a game. Prior to version 1.1 you were taken into the Game Builder for that game, which meant you had to pause while the game loaded. Now when you select a game you are taken immediately to the Gather Players screen. This change introduced the action gear icon in the lower right of the game file icon, which gives you four actions you can apply to the game file: Edit (takes you to the Game Builder screen like before), Play, Email and Delete.
  3. Game files can now be emailed to collaborators from within the game, and received into the game from iOS' Mail app. To send a game file you have created on to a collaborator tap the gear icon on a game file folder in the Select Games screen and tap the Email button. You'll be presented with the standard iOS email generation sheet to enter their email address and adjust the suggested subject and message contents as you feel necessary. To receive a game file open the Mail app, select the mail message containing the game file and tap on the game file. iOS will present a sheet asking which app you would like to open the game file with; tap on Guess & Know and iOS will launch Guess & Know. Guess & Know will take the necessary actions to make the game file available to you!
  4. Game files that haven't been opened yet sport a "New" banner across them just as a visual aid when you are collaborating on games.
  5. Guess & Know Companion now shows the player's team name throughout in the buzzer screens. This helps in schools where students are passing control of the Guess & Know Companion buzzer around for fairness and the students might not remember what team name they had chosen.
  6. Changing your team name in Guess & Know Companion is now reflected on the host iPad instantly, as long as the host has not yet tapped your team name to join you into the game. Once the host has accepted the team into the game, he or she has also accepted the team name. To allow a team to change their game prior to staring game play but after the host as accepted them in to the game, just tap the team name a second time on the host iPad to remove that team from the game. Once the new name has been entered it will show up changed on the host iPad and can be rejoined into the game with another tap on the name.
  7. We made a slight enhancement to the process of selecting a bonus amount when Guess & Know Companion players are choosing their bonus amount. On the host iPad there was default text that appeared in the entry field where the host would enter they bonus amount or adjust the bonus amount requested by a Guess & Know Companion player. This text read "Enter Bonus Amount" so it wasn't very clear to the host whose responsibility it was to enter a bonus amount when a Guess & Know Companion player was involved. We now change that default text to indicate that the Guess & Know Companion player is entering their request.

  Fixed Issues:

  1. Guess & Know Companion players show up in the Gather Players list right away now. A lot of work went in to removing the (sometimes) delay, work that has made the "Refresh" button essentially obsolete. That button will probably go away in the next update unless we hear from you that you encountered a situation where it was needed. But then we'll probably fix that issue in the next update anyway!
  2. We fixed a lot of smaller issues you would probably never have encountered were you not a member of our dedicated, persistent, resilient, and, er, creative Quality Assurance team -- so this mention here is a public "Thank you!" to them.

• Version 1.0.1, Released January 7, 2012

  The general release of both Guess & Know and Guess & Know Companion

  Fixed Issues:

  1. Sample Game now shows up on initial launch of the app as we intended.
  2. Small change to the user interface for adding players into the game, designed to alleviate confusion about the difference between an available player and a player you've admitted into the game. We're looking at alternative ways of making this more clear, but the separation between available and admitted gives the host the chance to look over the name the player has chosen before admitting that player into the game. Two people of the same name would be confusing. A name that could be offensive would be a problem.
  3. In Guess & Know Companion we fixed a bug that could cause the app to quit if the host returned to add more players into a game that was in progress. Adding players after a game has started may not be the right choice, since the new players potentially begin at a point deficit, and restarting a game isn't very fair since existing players have already seen some questions and answers. Nonetheless, we don't think your app should unexpectedly quit on you for any reason!

• Version 1.0, Released December 20, 2012

  The initial release of both Guess & Know and Guess & Know Companion

  Known Issues:

  1. Sample Game is not showing on initial run of the app. Please see the Support page for a work around.
  2. Deleting a round can sometimes leave the name of the round incorrect. This is purely cosmetic.
  3. The description of Guess & Know Companion on the App Store lists the iPad as a compatible device. In this version that isn't strictly true. It might work. We plan to support Companion on the iPad in a future release.
  4. There can be a delay of several seconds before a Companion shows up in the "Gather Players" screen. We're looking in to that.