What is Water Cooler Trivia?
It’s weekly office trivia quizzes. Learn who’s keeping up with the Kardashians, who’s an undercover bookworm, and who’s just a really good guesser.
How does it work?
If your office has a group, stop reading these FAQs and ask a coworker to invite you to join the group. They will have an invite link in every email they’ve received from us.
If you’re looking to create a new group for your office, sign up here. You just choose a group name and some details on when you want your weekly quiz. Most groups choose to get a quiz at 9am on Monday mornings to make the start to the work week a bit cheerier. Everyone in the group will get the same quiz, and we email the group results and your individual scorecard the next day.
How often will I receive quizzes?
Once per week. No more, no less. We don’t like spam or ads in our inboxes so we respect yours.
How many people in my office can participate?
Any number can sign up to receive quizzes, we’re not going to rain on your parade.
How much does it cost?
The first month of quizzes is always free. After that, the cost depends on how large your group is, starting at $10 per month for groups with 10 or fewer people. Check out the pricing page to learn more about keeping the trivia coming at your office.
What if people cheat?
We operate on the honor system. If a coworker is cheating, that’s just a bummer because we’re not offering prizes. Water Cooler Trivia aims to spark conversations and competition in the office. We recommend politely asking the coworker in person if they are using the internet to aid their brain. Maybe they’re not, and they have a surprisingly robust knowledge of world capitals and Oscar winners.
What do most companies choose for their settings?
Usually, it’s a 9am Monday quiz that closes for submissions at 7pm Monday night and results come the next morning at 10am. And folks tend to like Easy or Medium question difficulty. Surprisingly, most groups actually don’t elect to set up a personalized category of questions. That’s okay, it makes our trivia-writing burden lighter.
What’s a kickoff quiz?
As soon as you create the group, we launched a "kickoff" quiz as a demo. This kickoff quiz is open for responses for 16 hours, and then results come 8 hours after that. So the results should be arriving exactly one day after you’ve signed up.
Moving forward, your weekly trivia contests will occur at the time you choose in your group settings.
Got any cool data points about Water Cooler Trivia you can share?
Indeed! We’ve been told that Water Cooler Trivia spawns at least five workplace conversations per week. We don't have as strong of data on this, but we're pretty sure it also makes you 8% smarter. Also, we have thousands of groups that have submitted over a million trivia responses. So that’s pretty neat.
Is there a mobile app?
Nope. But the site works pretty well on mobile, so feel free to take your weekly quiz while on the subway. And there is a Slack app.
Have the WCT makers ever been on Jeopardy?
Final stage of auditions three times… but no cigar. We’re pretty sure Trebek has a personal vendetta against us for stealing his quizmaster thunder.
Still wondering what's going on?
Email [email protected]
Can I customize my quizzes?
Yes! During the sign up process you could nix the Sports & Games questions or add a custom category for New York City. You can also manage the difficulty settings and quiz timing.
How do tiebreakers work?
There’s ten questions each week. So two folks might tie for first place, or second place, you get the idea. To break that tie, we ask one “numeric” question each week, like “how many total points were scored in the 2018-19 NBA season?” Whoever is closer successfully breaks the tie, and, well, wins. Not Price Is Right style, you can guess too high and not be eliminated.
Can I change the group name?
Sure can, just head to the settings page from your dashboard. You can only do this if you’re a group Captain.
Can I change my group’s personalized category?
Indeed, as many times as you want. Just head to the settings page from your dashboard. Our favorite categories to write questions for: Coffee, Seinfeld, NYC, Transportation.
I changed the timing of our quiz but I haven’t seen it yet. Why not?
Well, it depends. If you have an active quiz right now, you can change the quiz closing and results time, but you can’t change the time of the quiz send, because it’s already been sent! In that case, you’re changing the setting for all subsequent quizzes. Shoot [email protected] a note if you’re still having trouble.
What’s this “Teams” thing?
Well, we know that winning in the whole office is hard sometimes, so we want to give you the ability to compete against your team/department/division along with the whole office. So you’ll be told that you got 10th of 49 participants at TechCo, but 1st of 10 within the Accounting Department. We’ll also let your group know which Team was the best that week, where the team score is the sum of the top three individuals from the team.
How do I add new Teams?
Just head to the roster page and click Teams, there you can add, edit, and delete teams.
How many teams can I add?
Infinite. Well, probably not that many. But at least 200, which should be way more than you need.
How do I delete someone from my Roster?
First, you’ll need to be a group Captain. And then you just head to the roster page from your group’s dashboard and click the trashcan icon on that person’s row.
Two teams tied. How’d you decide which one was the winner?
The winning team is the one that had the highest-scoring individual.
How do I invite more of my coworkers to join the trivia fun?
Click the megaphone icon from your group’s dashboard and you’ll be able to email an invite asap or you can copy a private “join link” that you can share.
How do I add multiple coworkers at once?
Shoot us a note at [email protected]
How can I edit the name or email address of someone on the roster?
Shoot us a note at [email protected]
How do I start a free trial?
Click the big, orange button at the top of this page. Or just click here.
My free trial is about to expire. What do I do?
It depends. Want to keep the sweet trivia flowing? Click the billing link we emailed your group’s Captains or look for the money icon on your group dashboard.
How do I just sign up and start paying without a free trial?
Just kidding, no one has ever asked us this. We’re big believers in free samples, so go for the free trial and a couple weeks later we’ll email you about a paid subscription. Start your free trial.
Which plan do I choose?
We’re making the decision easy for you: plans are based on the number of people in your trivia group. We will only charge for active participants, because we hate sneaky charges. You can deactivate people who’ve left the company in your roster page.
What happens if new coworkers want to join but we’re at the maximum number of people in our plan?
We won’t start charging you extra money! We’ll shoot you a note and let you know that you can either upgrade your plan to the next group size tier, or you can manage your roster to deactivate a different coworker to make room for the new one.
What’s the difference between monthly and annual subscriptions?
Annual comes with three months free. Otherwise, they are each exactly what they sound like, annual subscriptions pay once per year and monthly payments pay once per month.
Do you have any referral bonuses?
Not yet...but if you refer a friend to sign up her office, email [email protected] and he’ll send something nice your way.
How do I change my subscription plan?
Head to your group’s Billing section to change or cancel your subscription.
How do I change my billing details?
See above. Same process! Except you click “Change card” instead of “Change plan.”
What's the deal with these trophies?
If your group subscribes, we’ll mail you a bobblehead trophy to pass around the office and celebrate the weekly winner. Shipping’s on us. Here’s what they look like.
What data do you collect?
Names and email addresses and trivia responses. That way we can let you know how you did and let the group know what the winner’s name is. We don’t collect gender or birthday or favorite color or social security number or blood type or the street name of your paternal grandfather’s elementary school.
What do you do with that data?
We email you about trivia. We let your group’s admin (“Captain”) export the group roster and data. And that’s it.
Do you sell ads?
No. But sometimes we buy ads for the Water Cooler Trivia brand, like in Google Ads or on podcasts. We make our money by making your work week better, not by selling your data.
Do you do anything nefarious at all?
Sometimes we chortle at misspellings in the responses, but we don’t do anything else nefarious. And we definitely don’t do anything nefarious with your data, like sell it or store it sloppily. That’s not our game.
Do you have more details on your data protection agreement?
Sure do. Want to read the gory, legal details? Here’s the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy. And if you want to share a template DPA form your company users in order to do business together, we’re game. Just shoot an email to [email protected]
So… what’s the deal with this Slack integration?
Water Cooler Trivia was first built for email. But we love that Slack is eating the world of email, so we’re making it easier to play weekly Water Cooler Trivia contests directly via Slack. This means a weekly reminder post in a public channel when the contest is ready for your brain, then a post in that channel when the winners have been determined. Participants that opt in to Slack with their account will also receive a DM with the contest each week along with a private link to their scorecard.
Did Slack review your app?
Yep, we jumped through those hoops. Here you can see we’re an official app in their App Directory.
How do I set up the Slack integration for an existing group?
Just jump on over to the Slack icon from your group dashboard. Should be pretty straightforward from there.
How do I create a new Water Cooler Trivia group via Slack?
Click the big ol’ “Add to Slack” button right from the WCT homepage. This way you’ll create a Slack-native group and avoid the world of emailed contests and results.
How do I manage my notification settings?
Head to your profile and you can decide whether you’re getting weekly trivia contests and results over email, via Slack DM, both, or, well, neither.
Do I need to sign up with email first and then add slack later?
No, you can sign up directly, and exclusively, with Slack. Just head to the #channel where your workspace has the Water Cooler Trivia app installed and scroll up to the welcome message in there. Should be a nice, inviting link awaiting your mouse-click.
I have another question about the Slack integration.
Heck yes, we love questions. Email [email protected] for a speedy, humanoid response.
I have a feature idea for the Slack integration.
You know the drill, email [email protected]
We can’t add the Slack app. What gives?
This probably means you’re not an Admin on your Slack workspace and your group has restrictive permissions on who can add apps. Fear not: when you try to add the Water Cooler Trivia Slack app, Slack will let your Admin know. If you’re still running into problems, shoot us a note.
Do you have a Microsoft Teams integration?
No, not yet. We’re looking into it, and will update this answer once we’ve decided to head down that path...
