Until now, multiplayer trivai only let you act on your own turn, with one exception: the steal. We've just shipped a redesign that changes the rhythm of the whole table. Other people's turns are now partly yours, because while they play, you can set traps.
This is the field guide: what traps do, what a Wildcard is, how the new tribute economy splits the money, and when any of it is actually a good idea.
How a trap springs
Traps are multiplayer-only, and you get three per game. While it's not your turn, you can secretly trap any unanswered tile. One trap per player per tile, but several players can trap the same tile, and that stacking matters enormously in a moment.
When anyone picks a trapped tile, the traps spring: the question they expected is swapped for a Wildcard, a question from a surprise category that isn't on the board and that nobody prepped for. The topic expert who confidently picked the 500 in their best category is suddenly answering something else entirely. That swap alone, the ambush, is the trap's base effect.
The multiplier ladder
A sprung Wildcard is worth the tile's value times its ring bonus times the trap stack. The stack counts only traps placed by players other than the picker:
- 1 opponent trap: ×1. The surprise swap is the whole effect.
- 2 opponent traps: ×1.5.
- 3 opponent traps: ×2.25, the prismatic tier, and it multiplies with ring bonuses. A 500 tile under a full stack inside overlapping rings is worth north of 2,500 points, which is the kind of number that decides games.
Tribute, the polite knife
Here's the redesign's heart. Answer a sprung question right and the stake doesn't all go to you: it splits evenly between you and the trappers who sprung it. N trappers means N+1 equal shares. So when two players trap a 500 tile, it springs at 750, and a right answer pays 250 to each of the three of you. The trappers' cuts bank into their scores instantly; your share goes into your round pot like any other answer.
Sit with the incentives for a second, because this is our favorite piece of design in the game. A trap is no longer a pure attack. If your victim answers the Wildcard, you get paid for having trapped them. Trapping a strong player's favorite tile is now a way to tax their strength. They win the question; you collect tribute anyway.
The miss penalty, or why you can't tank
The obvious exploit: answer the sprung question badly on purpose, so the trappers who ambushed you collect nothing. We thought of that, and the redesign closes it with a rule we find almost suspiciously elegant.
Answer a sprung question wrong and you lose your would-be share, straight off your banked score. Tanking the question to stiff the trappers costs you exactly what honesty would have paid you. The spite play and the honest play have identical prices, so you might as well just try to answer the question. The math is the referee.
The escape hatch
You can pick your own trapped tile. Your own trap springs for you like anyone else's, which turns a defensive oddity into a real tactic: trap a tile in a category you dread, and if you're ever forced toward it, spring it yourself and take the Wildcard instead. A getaway car, parked in advance.
Your own trap never multiplies your own question and never pays you tribute; a purely self-trapped tile is simply a Wildcard at normal value, and it's exempt from the miss penalty too. The economy only runs on traps you spring for other people.
Steals, and who gets paid
The steal rules you know are unchanged at the core: miss a typed answer and an 8-second window opens; first buzz gets one shot; if the stealer misses, the window reopens for everyone else. A right steal pays the tile's value, a wrong one costs the same, and steals stay free and unlimited. (Multiple-choice misses end quietly with no window: picking from options was already your safety net.)
Two wrinkles where steals meet traps. A stolen Wildcard pays its base value times the trap stack, but no ring bonus; rings belong to the player whose turn it is. And stealing a sprung question pays tribute too: the stealer's award splits with the trappers the same N+1 way. The trappers earned their cut of that question, whoever ends up landing it.
When to actually trap
Three plays fall out of the economy:
- Tax the expert. Trap the high tiles in the leader's best category. Either they hit a question nobody prepped for, or they clear it and pay you tribute. You profit from their success and from their failure. This is the bread-and-butter trap.
- Hunt the prismatic. Coordinating a full stack is loud table politics, but a ×2.25 Wildcard sitting in ring range is the biggest single prize in the game, and everyone knows exactly who set it.
- Park the getaway car. Spend one trap on your own escape hatch early. It costs a third of your supply, and it has saved more games than we expected.
Three charges, no carryover, whole game. Spend them like they're the last three sentences of an argument.
The board was already territory. Now the territory has landmines, and the landmines pay rent. Type six topics, bring three friends, and see who springs first.