QuizUp

I'm a hard-core console gamer, so most iPhone games hold little allure for me. The ones I do have on my phone tend to be fast...the kind that let you occupy a few seconds while you are waiting in the doctor's office or check-out line at Costco.

Bookworm has been a favorite iPhone game of mine. There are 49 letters in a grid and you form as many different words as you can. What I like is that the game saves your progress, so you can jump in and out at will. Sometimes a game will last two weeks for me....stealing 30 seconds here to play and maybe 45 seconds the next day.

When I play my Xbox One, I prefer to play against carbon-based opponents. Artificial Intelligence doesn't hold a candle to the human brain, so it makes the game a lot more challenging going head-to-head with a human. Now I've stumbled across an iPhone game that lets me do the same, yet also meets my requirement of being short so that I can jump in and out at will.

It's a free game called QuizUp. It's a fascinating trivia game that let's you choose the Trivia Topic. Once you do, it throws you into a match with another person in some other random part of the world. Each match consists of six rounds...six questions, actually. Your score is determined by how many of the six trivia questions you get correct....and how fast you answer. The match goes to the smartest and swiftest.

The beauty is that a match rarely lasts more than 30 seconds. Then you can just bow out or ask for a rematch or go find a new opponent. There are over 250 trivia topics, so the scope of the game is huge. It's fun, fast and never gets boring....and it has carbon-based opponents! That's a lot better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

You can just play random opponents or build up a list of friends to play against. If you want to go head-to-head against me, my gamertag is grogs (from Minnesota). You can check the game out here: https://www.quizup.com. Then go download it for free in the App Store.