Host guide
The host is the person who creates the room. You pick the questions, set the rules, and move the game from one result to the next. This page covers everything the lobby lets you change, and how to use it for a dinner table, a classroom or a live stream.
Before anyone joins
On the home page, type your name and tap Create a room. You get two ways in:
- Quick start opens a room that's ready to go: 5 General Knowledge questions, 20 seconds to answer, 15 to guess, and one practice round. Good for a few friends at a table.
- Set it up myself takes you to the lobby with the standard settings, where you can change everything below.
You also choose a hosting style. Play along means you answer and guess like everyone else while running the game. Host only means your phone becomes a control panel: you see who has answered, who you're still waiting on, and the buttons to move on, but you don't score. You can switch between the two in the lobby.
The lobby shows a four-letter room code, a QR code and a join link. People scan or type the code, enter a name (up to 12 characters, and no two players can share one), and appear in your player list.
Choosing where the questions come from
Tap Questions in the lobby. The source is fixed once the game starts, so if you want variety in one game, pick Party Mix.
| Party Mix | Repeats 3 quiz questions, then 2 polls (this-or-that, no right answer), then 1 spotlight round. You pick the quiz pack and 1–50 rounds. Choose at least 6 rounds to get all three kinds. |
|---|---|
| Question packs | Random questions from one pack: a topic (General Knowledge, Holidays & New Year, Riddles, The '90s, Geography, Pub Quiz, Office Life) or an age group (Little Kids, Big Kids, Teens, All Ages, Sayings & Idioms, The '70s & '80s). The age packs are all multiple choice, so kids and grandparents only need to tap. Each pack holds 12–15 questions, so that's the most rounds you can set for it. |
| Write your own | You write every question and its answer. They're played in the order you list them, and the number of questions is the number of rounds. |
| Players ask | Players take turns writing a question, in random order. The writer skips answering and only guesses. Use a multiple of the player count for rounds so everyone gets a turn — the lobby offers to round it for you. |
| Spotlight | Each round one player secretly picks between two options; everyone else guesses their pick, then everyone guesses how many read them right. |
With packs and Party Mix you can turn on Difficulty flow. Every pack question carries an easy, medium or hard label (an editorial estimate, shown on the guessing screen), and the flow orders the built-in quizzes as an easy opener, a rising middle with a breather, and a hard finish. If you play again in the same room, questions you've already seen don't come back until the pack runs out.
Writing your own questions
Each room takes up to 50 questions of up to 200 characters. Three types:
- Multiple choice: 2 to 6 options, one marked correct.
- Short answer: the typed answer must match yours, ignoring spaces, capitals, a leading "a/an/the" and trailing punctuation. You can list up to 10 other accepted answers, one per line. If the answer is a number, players can write it any way ("1,440", "1.2k", "3 million") and you can add a unit and a margin of error from 0 to ±50% — handy for "roughly how many?" questions.
- This or that: two options, no right answer. You tap the option to count, and players guess how many picked it.
Every question can be worth 1× or 2×, can carry an optional topic, and can have a link that only appears on the result screen as "Read more" (shown any earlier, people would just look it up). Questions are kept in your browser for next time. Sign in with Google and you can save them to your library as question sets — up to 20 sets of 50 questions each — and load or duplicate them later from any device.
One thing to know: in Play along mode the host answers their own written questions too. If you wrote them, switch to Host only or treat yourself as out of the running.
Your own spotlight questions
In Spotlight mode you can add up to 30 two-option questions of your own (80 characters per question, 20 per option). Mix them in shuffles them with the built-in list; Only mine uses just yours. "Road trip: drive or ride along?" about your own group beats any generic question.
Rules and timers
Open Rules & timers in the lobby:
- Presets: Quick (20s to answer, 15s to guess), Standard (30s / 20s) and Streamer (60s / 40s, to cover stream delay). Or set each step yourself, anywhere from 5 to 300 seconds. In Players ask there's also a time limit for writing (60s on Standard).
- Start with a practice round: one easy built-in question with no points. It doesn't use up your own questions.
- One-shot boost: each player can mark one guess per game; if it's exactly right, they get an extra 50 points. A miss costs nothing.
- Double points in the last round: keeps people at the bottom in the game. A 2× question in a doubled last round is worth 4×.
- Show who got it right: turn it off and results show only counts. Wrong answers never show names in any case.
- Lock room (in the main lobby list): nobody new can join. This is the one setting you can change mid-game.
Results have no timer. You decide when to move on, which gives you room to talk. For the details of how points are worked out, see Scoring.
Using the big screen
If you have a TV, projector or stream, use the Big screen view. In the lobby, copy its link and open it on the computer connected to the display (or tap Open on this device). Keep running the game from your phone; the big screen follows along by itself.
- Lobby: a large QR code, the room code and how many people have joined, so people can join from their seats.
- During a round: the question, the countdown and how many have answered, with the QR code and room code in the corner for latecomers.
- Results: the count of correct answers climbs up from zero, then the answer, who got it (up to 20 names, then "+N more", unless you hid names), the closest guesses and a chart of what everyone guessed. Once at least 10 people get it wrong, a cloud of the wrong answers appears too, without names.
- The end: final standings and game highlights such as most exact guesses, biggest climb and biggest surprise.
Browsers block sound until someone clicks, so click the sound button on the big screen once. When the big screen is open, sound plays there and not on your phone. With no big screen, turn on Sound effects on this phone so only the host's phone plays the start, reveal and final fanfare.
Different group sizes
Around a table (3–8 people)
Quick start, Play along, sound on your phone. When 8 or fewer people answer, scores depend on how close each guess was rather than on rank, so one miss doesn't sink anyone. Small groups are where Spotlight and Players ask shine, because everyone gets a turn. Try a pack first, then Spotlight for the second game.
A class, team or party (10–50 people)
Host only, big screen on, Standard timers. Party Mix keeps the energy varied, or write questions about the group itself. Consider hiding names at work or school. Avoid Players ask here: everyone getting a turn would mean dozens of rounds.
An event hall or stream (up to 300 people)
A room holds up to 300 players. Use Host only, the big screen and, for streams, the Streamer timers so viewers with delay aren't cut off. In big rooms, being within 1% of the real count counts as exact (within 3 with 300 answering). Spotlight still works but only a few people will ever be in the spotlight, so packs, Party Mix or your own questions suit a crowd better.
Pacing
Answering and guessing end as soon as every connected player has submitted, or when time runs out. If a few people are dawdling, check the "Still waiting on" list on your phone and tap Close now to end the step early. With Standard timers a round takes under a minute plus however long you spend on the result, so ten rounds usually fit in about a quarter of an hour. Linger on surprising results and move briskly through obvious ones.
Things to say
- While people answer: "Don't look at your neighbor's screen — it's not your answer that counts anyway."
- Before the guess: "Everyone knows this one, right? So it's all of us. Or is it?"
- At the reveal: "Two people missed the capital of Italy. You know who you are."
- When the guesses were all over the place: "Look at that chart. We have no idea what each other knows."
- Before the last round (if doubled): "Last question counts double. Whoever's at the bottom, this is your moment."
- In Spotlight: "Sam, everyone thinks they know you. Prove them wrong."
Latecomers, dropped phones and other hiccups
- Latecomers who join mid-round watch that round and play from the next one, starting at 0 points. People only appear in the standings once they've played a round. Lock the room if you want no more arrivals.
- Dropped connections: reopening the game in the same browser puts the player back in their seat. The game doesn't wait for disconnected phones, but anyone who was in the round and didn't answer counts as a wrong answer, and a missing guess scores nothing.
- If the host drops for more than 30 seconds, the earliest-joined connected player takes over. You can also hand over on purpose: tap a name in the player list and choose Make host. If the room was Host only, the new host plays along.
- Removing someone (tap their name, then Remove) is permanent for that room. Use it for offensive names.
- Players ask: if the writer runs out of time, you can Skip them (they move to the back of the line) or give them 30 seconds more.
- Spotlight: if the person in the spotlight doesn't pick, that round passes with no points.
- A room closes after 2 hours with no activity.
Playing again
On the final screen you can choose Play again, same settings or Change settings and play again, which returns everyone to the lobby with your written questions still there. Pack and spotlight questions already used in this room are skipped until the list runs out, so a rematch feels fresh. Anyone can tap Share results to save the final ranking as an image for the group chat.
Looking for material? See party question ideas, questions for classrooms and ways to play.