Pace’s Programming Board’s “Free Money Game Show” presented attendees with the chance to win cash prizes by answering trivia questions. The event, which took place Monday night in the Kessel Student Center’s Gottesman room, was a friendly competition that brought students together and tested their pop culture trivia knowledge, with the goal of winning $200 in cash.

For the game show’s first round, audience members stood up and danced for their spots. As each popular dance song played, the host picked four students who stood out to play.

The first round had three categories; Disney song trivia, boy band songs, and Nickelodeon TV show theme songs. The four players would hit the buzzer when they knew the answer and received five points for every right answer. The winner of round one left the stage with $20.

In round two, the show’s host, comedian Adam Ace, picked random members of the audience to go up to the front of the stage, blow up a number of balloons and pop them as fast as they could. Those who finished the task the fastest, had the chance to participate. For this round, the trivia categories were movie soundtracks, Netflix theme songs, rap, broadway musicals, and “My Grandfather’s music,” which were, in other words, songs from the ’60s.

While the four competitors answered questions, to win $40 dollars this round, the audience had a chance to swap with a player at random if none of the selected players could answer the question.

Rounds three and four were the most competitive rounds, with $60 and $80 being the respective grand prizes. Players were selected by Adams randomly to complete small tasks similar to the ones in the previous rounds. For these rounds, players selected a partner to compete with and then split the money, if won.

The final rounds consisted of categories such as songs from movie series, girl groups and TV shows, movie quotes, cartoon theme songs, artists with one name, country music, famous collaborations and more.

Taylor Willz, a reoccurring participant, was ultimately the winner, with $20 dollars won in the first round solo and $80 in last round with a partner. Willz was selected to play the first round and maintained her spot but once the team substitution rule came into play in round three, it became a challenge.

“I won the first time and I didn’t come up the second round,” Willz states, “I came back up the third round and I was winning and then we lost our spot and then we came back up in a different spot.”

Throughout the game, there were a lot of opportunities to steal and lose points. The competition was high and all the players had their eyes on the cash prize.

“I was killing it the whole time and nobody was picking our [player] number and then out of nowhere someone picked our number and we got sit down,” Willz explained. “We were trying to get it back, and we didn’t get it and then the very last chance we got- there were two questions left, I [randomly] pulled the three and I went back up.”

Although most of the audience got involved in the game and were eager to participate, some came just to watch and support their friends, such as junior Briana Damour, who arrived to the event later in the evening to support Willz and other players.

“I think it was really unique and really fun,” Damour, who says she’s excited to participate in the event if it returns, said. “I totally think they should have this again next semester, it’s a really interesting concept.”

The game show was an opportunity to bring students together during the beginning of the spring semester and allowed for fun and friendly competition to test their pop culture trivia knowledge and ultimately, win some cash.