I can play Guinness World Records faster than you

After almost three years of campaigning, Chicago’s first-round elimination from the 2016 Olympic host city vote was embarrassing. Luckily, you can still redeem your country’s honor with help from Warner Bros.’s  Guinness World Records iPhone game.

Addicting for all ages, you travel the world to participate in 36 obscure competitions like balancing a car on your head, unicycle hurdling and turkey feather plucking. Only you’re not just competing against yourself. The game lets you submit high scores and keeps records set by other regional, national and global iPhone users on each event.

The game leans toward a younger audience and its graphics remind me of early learning programs that are supposed to make math fun. The app also lets you design players to look like yourself and/or anime characters.

Meanwhile, world record trivia facts are scrolling at the bottom of your screen, just in case you needed to know that the fastest time for drinking two pints of milk was 3.2 seconds.

This is an app best played in groups with its multiplayer mode for up to four people. The events themselves were challenging enough to frustrate users of any age, though some games could use design improvements with their touch-screen controls. 

At 99 cents, the app is definitely worth trying every event at least once, but we all know it won’t stop there. Realistically, it’s hard to feel good about tearing 10 phone books in half under 37 seconds when you know there’s some kid in Norway who did it five seconds faster. That’s just a fact.

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