{"id":775861,"date":"2026-07-03T05:57:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T05:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/775861\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T05:57:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T05:57:14","slug":"whos-calling-thousands-are-chasing-payphones-across-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/775861\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s calling? Thousands are chasing payphones across Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Who knew payphones could be competitive?<\/p>\n<p>Payphone Tag\u00a0is turning old public phones into a real-world game where players race to claim them, steal them from each other, and score bonus points by capturing three that form a triangle.<\/p>\n<p>What started as a challenge between mates has grown into one of Australia&#8217;s quirkiest new pastimes. Creator Alex Allchin explains how it all works with Justin Smith.<\/p>\n<p>And Sienna even called in from a payphone in Caulfield while capturing another nearby one.<\/p>\n<p>To play <a class=\"Link_link__5eL5m ScreenReaderOnly_srLinkHint__OysWz Link_showVisited__C1Fea Link_showFocus__ALyv2\" href=\"https:\/\/payphonetag.com\/\" data-component=\"Link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">PAYPHONE TAG \u2014 Claim Your Turf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>To follow Sienna on Instagram and TikTok @siennainthesun\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who knew payphones could be competitive? Payphone Tag\u00a0is turning old public phones into a real-world game where players&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[367979,64,63,1862,367981,343212,367977,367978,367980,105],"class_list":["post-775861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-alex-allchin","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-game","tag-justin-smith","tag-payphone","tag-payphone-tag","tag-public-phone","tag-siennainthesun","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}