Science Reviews

Beat the Experts is a fast-paced trivia game where you go head-to-head with not only your opponents, but with a variety of hand-selected experts in this new release from University Games.

At first glance, Beat the Experts seems like a regular trivia game. But there's a twist. The trivia cards contain a series of ten questions in a particular category, and the name of an "expert" in that particular category. This "expert" can be anyone from quarterback Steve Young to Bill Nye the Science Guy. These cards also tell you how many questions the expert answered correctly. In order to advance in the game, you must get more answers right than the expert did.

On each turn, one player is designated as the Reader. This person will be either someone on your team, or-if you're not playing in teams-the opponent to your left. The Reader selects five Expert cards. The Reader then reads off the category and expert on each card. The playing team chooses which expert they'd like to go up against. The team then has one minute to answer as many of the questions on the card as possible. If the team answers more questions correctly than the expert, then the team advances on the game board. Game play continues until one team reaches the Final Question square on the board.

The first time I played this, I was convinced that I was going to perform terribly. I went up against Brian Boitano, and I thought to myself, "How on earth am I going to know more about ice skating than an Olympic Gold Medalist?" I was surprised to learn that although all the questions on a card have a similar theme, they're not related in quite the way you expect. On that particular turn, I was asked a few questions about ice skating, yes-but I was also asked questions about the movie Ice Castles, the song "Ice, Ice, Baby," and the South Park musical number "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" So I ended up doing pretty well.

Beat the Experts is definitely a different type of trivia game, but it's a lot of fun-especially with a group of people. If your friends think they know it all, split them up into teams and break this game out at your next party.