What color guitar will Taylor Swift play for a given song in her next Eras Tour show? The Mastermind … [+]
As Taylor Swift’s 2024 Eras Tour dances its way toward world domination, a mobile game that involves predicting various elements of upcoming shows continues to hook Swifties by the tens of thousands.
The game’s called Mastermind, after a Swift song of the same name. And it’s spilling over into social media feeds, where players regularly share their scores, tout their victories and lament their defeats. Think of #mastermind posts like the Wordle scores that fill online feeds, only with sequins and emoji.
Mastermind lives in the Swift Alert app, which Swiftie Kyle Mumma launched in August 2023 to notify fans when in their time zone Era Tours shows around the world would start so they could tune in to livestreams.
The game tasks players with guessing, for example, what colors the set for the 1989 era will be; what shade and length dress Swift will wear while performing “Fearless;” whether the guitar she plays for “Lover” will be pink, blue or lavender; and which hits the Grammy winner will feature in her highly anticipated nightly acoustic set of surprise songs.
Correct answers mean points—and social media bragging rights, of course.
“This is my greatest moment,” one fan wrote on X, formerly Twitter, after nailing a few of Swift’s onstage outfits. “Kinda slayed this,” boasted another.
Incorrect answers mean good-natured self-criticism and amusing memes.
The day the game launched in February for the Tokyo shows, 6,000 Swifties played, according to Mumma. During the tour’s current 18-city European leg, numbers have grown consistently, with 288,000 people playing during Tuesday’s show in Zurich, a “new record for us,” Mumma said.
Swift Alert is available for iPhones and Android devices. Users get most features for free, including Mastermind, though a $1.99 one-time premium fee unlocks the entire experience.
Alerts remain the anchor of Swift Alert, said Mumma, who works full time as a product manager for a tech sports company when he’s not keeping up with all things Swift. But Mastermind has become the app’s most popular feature.
“That’s the thing that’s really caught fire here recently,” Mumma said in an interview. “It’s been a fun way for people to feel involved and invested in the tour. Even when they’re not able to attend or even watch, it just gives them this emotional connection.”
Ahead of shows, Swifties share their predictions on TikTok, where other fans can weigh in.
The first day the game launched in February for the Tokyo shows, 6,000 Swifties played, according to Mumma. During the tour’s current 18-city European leg, numbers have grown consistently, with 288,000 people playing during Tuesday’s show in Zurich, a “new record for us,” Mumma said. Some players make random guesses, others tap their encyclopedic knowledge of Swift and Eras Tour trends to assess the odds the singer-songwriter will wear purple over blue when performing “Speak Now.”
Still, “as much as she loves patterns and Easter eggs, trying to guess what Taylor is going to do from patterns alone often proves impossible,” Mumma said.
New games go live about 24 hours before a show starts, as do TikTok videos of players sharing their predictions, and the answer fields close right around when Swift takes the stage. Someone from the app’s four-person team—three in the United States, one in Turkey—watches every show, pulling the lever to disclose the answers as they reveal themselves during a concert.
A Mastermind leaderboard gets updated about 10 minutes post-show, with the player in the coveted top spot winning a prize, Swift-specific naturally, like a signed CD or vinyl record.
“We’ve shipped Mastermind prizes to winners in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Poland, Argentina, Brazil, Singapore, Portugal, Italy, France, Mexico and the Netherlands so far,” Mumma said. For most players, though, the real prize is a bit of wholesome Eras Tour fun.
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