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I tend to start each day with a cup of coffee and a bevy of games on my phone: word stuff, mostly, like Wordle and Connections, but also some dominos and the occasional geography challenge, which I am usually terrible at. Last week, however, I discovered something entirely new, and now I’m not sure it’s possible to truly settle into my day without trying my hand at The Daily Lowball.
The game seems to have come online on or around September 25, and this great new diversion has some robust playtime baked in, including two daily components that assume you’re an employee at a used-car lot—“Guess the Price” and “Steal or Bad Deal.” With the former, your boss presents you with five cars each day, and you’re tasked with, well, guessing their sale price. You lock in your best guess at the sale price, and then the actual price gets revealed, along with your grade for that guess and where your guess ranked among all the other players. Then it’s onto the next car. The closer you come to the price, either higher or lower, the better your score, with each car allotted 100 points and letter grades assigned to your guesses.
In “Steal or Bad Deal,” meanwhile, you’re shown another five cars and their sale prices, and you must determine if the buyer did well or not. Here, you are scored based on sale prices of similar cars. Both games have their own streaks, and good scores essentially allow you to keep your job at the lot, and tomorrow you’re shown a new batch of cars.
All the cars on The Daily Lowball come from Bring a Trailer. Those in “Guess the Price” and “Steal or Bad Deal” are accompanied by some basic info from each listing—total mileage; original MSRP and the equivalent today; mechanical specs; some bullet points that highlight trim, packages, or details. You’re not flying totally blind, in other words, but some knowledge of the market is useful.
A third game within the game, “Higher or Lower,” simply shows you two cars, one with a sale price and one without, and you have to guess whether the second car sold for more or less than the first. So, did that 2013 Audi Q7 TDI Prestige S Line sell for more or less than the $41,250 brought by a 22,000-mile 2001 Porsche 911 C4 with a six-speed? Guess correctly, and another car is presented against the Audi. On and on it goes, giving you the opportunity to see how long you can make a streak last—or at least until your next meeting begins.
The Daily Lowball is free to play, with or without an account, though you can’t make it onto the leaderboard without one, if that’s important to you. An archive houses all the previous days, too, so if you burn through today’s games and want to keep at it, there’s always yesterday, and the day before, and last week, all the way back to the beginning. Because it’s web-based, you can play it on desktop or mobile, and although it’s not an app, you can easily add it to your phone’s home screen.
Anyone who ever watched The Price Is Right as an armchair expert on the values of toasters and all-inclusive vacations to Nashville will identify with the gameplay here. And anyone who ever watched an online auction and said, “That sold for how much?!?” will also identify. The Daily Lowball is a fun, well-built, and moderately addictive game for gearheads, and it’s certainly worth adding to your morning repertoire.
