‘Best Guess Live’: Do You Actually Win Money on Mobile Game Show? Howie Mandel Weighs In

Howie Mandel‘s love of game shows knows no bounds, and most recently, it’s taken him to Netflix as one of the hosts of the mobile game show Best Guess Live. The streaming game allows viewers to play from their mobile devices with hopes of winning part of a daily cash prize. And, yes, Mandel assures us that the prize money is real.

“People are writing me and interacting with me every day about winning money,” Mandel told TV Insider. “People win big money. The beauty of it is that it’s a tiered prize: gold, silver, bronze. The earliest is gold, so if there’s one person who [guesses correctly] before everyone else, they don’t split the money. They take all the money in gold.”

Mandel explained that “sometimes 200 people get it right in the gold,” which means they split the total amount. “But whether you win a dollar, $100, $10,000, it doesn’t cost you anything to play,” the America’s Got Talent judge explained. “It’s kind of just a fun little escape from your day. I love [to play a] game. I love challenge. I love fun. And it’s just a great little 15 minutes of the day.”

So, how does it work? Mandel broke down the competition for us.

“There’s two rounds. Two [words] are put into a crystal ball. It could be a place, a thing, it could be anything. An object. Anything,” he explained. “I will give you five clues. They’re riddle-like clues. And after each clue, I give you 20 seconds on the clock to come up with what you think is in the crystal ball. The people that guess the earliest are the ones that win the money or split the money.”

The total prize each day is $15,000, but Mandel noted that the show gave away $1,000,000 in one week over Christmas last year. “You download the app for free, and you play every day for free at 5:00 Pacific, 8:00 Eastern,” he continued. “For 15 minutes, it’s just a little escape. You can pull over to the side of the freeway, you can call all your friends together in the office, you can do it at a bar. It’s five clues, and you guess what it is, and you get one shot in each round to guess.”

The most a single person has ever won is $200,000, Mandel shared. “It’s just fun to play,” he confirmed. “They don’t tell us the answers, so now I’m actually playing along, [too].”

Best Guess Live, Weekdays, 8/7c, Netflix