Hot potato: the pass-the-phone word game

The phone stands in for the object that travels round the circle, and the prompt on its screen sets what each holder must say. Nobody knows when the round will end, because the game draws the length in secret. The only safe place is an empty pair of hands, so every player tries to answer quickly and pass the phone on.

1. Type the players' names in seating order, or leave them blank, and press Start the game.
2. The screen says whose turn it is: "Hand the phone to Amira". A tap starts the hidden countdown and shows the prompt, such as a category.
3. Amira says one word that fits, taps the big Pass button and hands the phone to the next player in the circle.
4. Play carries on round the circle, each holder adding a new word, until the countdown runs out.
5. The screen turns red, the phone makes an explosion sound and, where the browser allows it, vibrates. The player holding it gets a potato.

The game follows the phone from the Pass taps alone. It moves one seat at a time, in the order the names were typed, and skips anyone who is out. Two taps closer together than 0.4 seconds count as one pass, so a nervous double tap does not jump a player. On a computer, Space or Enter passes too.

About 1.8 seconds after the explosion, the phone asks "Who was holding the phone?" with the tracked player already chosen. If someone handed it on without tapping, the group picks the right name. A disputed round can also be played again with no potato given. Take back the last potato undoes a mistake made after that.

Without music, something else has to decide when the passing stops: a counting rhyme, a caller, or a timer that nobody can see. On this page the phone is both the potato and that timer. Each round it draws a secret length, ticks while it runs and explodes at the end. Nobody has to work a music player or sit out to call stop.

The players sit in a circle and pass one phone. The phone shows a prompt, perhaps "Fruits" or "A word starting with M". The holder says a word that fits, taps Pass and hands it to the next seat. A hidden countdown runs all the while, and when it ends the screen goes red and the phone explodes. The player caught with it then gets a potato. With the starting rule, a player who reaches the limit is out, the phone skips them from then on, and the last player left wins. The group, not the game, judges whether each new word counts. Prompts can be categories, starting letters or both, and the group can add its own as well.

The Scout Association describes the version without a phone or a speaker. Everyone chants "One potato, two potato" while the beanbag goes round, and the player holding it on the last word is out. The phone's countdown does the same job as the rhyme, with one difference: nobody can count ahead to the end.

The normal countdown, the one a new game uses, lasts between 20 seconds and 45 seconds, and averages 32.5 seconds over many rounds. Short and long settings sit either side of it. Each round the game picks a length at random to the nearest 0.1 seconds, with every possible length equally likely.

This random timer draws from the browser's cryptographic random numbers, the source the W3C defines in its Web Cryptography specification for getRandomValues. The length is never shown, not even after the explosion, so nobody can learn the pattern of a game.

The ticking has three settings. By default it ticks every 0.8 seconds until 60% of the round has passed, then the gap shrinks evenly to 0.16 seconds at the bang. Since nobody knows the length, the faster ticking is a hint, never a warning. Steady ticking keeps one pace throughout and gives no clue at all, and the third setting stays silent until the explosion.

A prompt is the rule for the words, and the British prompts here come in three kinds. The first is a category, such as "Fruits", "Vegetables" and "Farm animals". The second is a starting letter. The third joins a wide category to a letter, as in "Animals, starting with B".

• Easy, written so children can play too: 52 categories.
• Medium: 55 categories, such as "Things in a bathroom", "Jobs in a hospital" and "Things that are round".
• Hard, narrower and aimed at adults: 45 categories, such as "Rivers of the UK", "Herbs and spices" and "Musical instruments with strings".
• All levels mixed: 152 categories in one pile.
• Category and letter: 18 wide categories paired with 13 letters, 234 prompts in all.

Starting letters are limited to A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, L, M, P, R, S, T and W. Each of these begins at least 2% of the common words in this site's English word list. With a category the bar rises to 3.5%, which leaves A, B, C, D, F, H, L, M, P, R, S, T and W. Rare letters such as Q, X and Z are left out so every prompt has answers.

By default a new prompt appears each round, so everyone answers the same one. That makes it a true word game: the obvious answers go first, and each later holder has to dig deeper. The other setting changes the prompt at every pass, which is easier and suits younger players.

Own prompts go in a box, one per line, up to 200 of them and 60 characters each. A topic from today's lesson, a holiday theme or the family's in-jokes all work. They join the built-in prompts or replace them, and they never leave the page. For quieter word puzzles with no timer, the word groups game sorts sixteen words into four hidden sets.

A potato is a point against the player caught holding the phone, and three rules decide what potatoes do. A new game uses elimination: a player who collects 3 is out, and the phone skips them from then on. The limit can be set anywhere from 1 to 10.

• Out at the limit: players drop out one by one, and the last player standing wins.
• Game ends at the first to the limit: everyone plays to the end, and the fewest potatoes win.
• No limit: the scoreboard just counts, until the group decides to stop.

Games have a natural ceiling. With 4 players and the elimination rule at 3 potatoes, a game lasts at most 11 rounds. Under the first-to-the-limit rule, the same group plays at most 9 rounds.

In the standings, fewer potatoes rank higher. Under the elimination rule, players still in rank above those who are out, and someone who went out later ranks above someone who went out earlier. Players level on every count share a place. Copy result puts the standings in a short text with the page link, ready to paste into a group chat.

Between 2 and 16 players can join, with 4 at the start. The game draws the first player of the first round at random. After that, the next round opens with the player who just got the potato, or with the person after them if the setting says so.

The game never checks the words. Whether a repeat counts, how long a player may hesitate and what to do with a wrong answer are up to the circle. The house rule here is short: the group decides. A player who stalls simply keeps the phone while the countdown runs on.

Some groups ban any word already said this round. Others give a potato for a long pause or a word that does not fit, using Take back the last potato or a replay to put the score right. None of these comes from a published rulebook. No association or publisher sets rules for the phone version. The hidden countdown, the ticking, the potatoes, the limits, the forfeits and who starts are all the site's own choices.

Forfeits are optional. When they are switched on, each explosion is followed by a small, kind challenge for the player who held the phone, drawn from 34 written for this page. The first two are "Sing one line of a song" and "Do your best animal noise".

The classic hot potato is a circle game played with a soft object. The Scout Association's version passes a beanbag or soft ball round a circle while music plays. When the music stops, whoever holds it is out, until a single winner remains. A dropped ball can simply be picked up again.

Pass the parcel shares the music and the circle, but it is a different British party game. A parcel wrapped in many layers goes round, and the holder unwraps one layer each time the music stops. Musical chairs uses the same stop-start music with chairs instead of an object. Hot potato is the one where holding the object is bad news.

The name also lives on as an idiom. Oxford Learner's Dictionaries and the Cambridge Dictionary both define a hot potato as a difficult problem or subject that people would rather not deal with.

For a game with a ball and no phone, the printable list puts 20, 40 or 60 prompts on one page, 40 unless changed. They come from the prompts in play, shuffled and numbered in two columns. A kitchen timer or a chosen caller then does the counting.

Here "hot potato" means the traditional game, written in lower case. Several businesses have registered HOT POTATO as a UK trade mark for games, and boxed games such as Pass the Bomb use a ticking timer too. This site has no link with any product of that name.

Every built-in prompt and forfeit is family friendly, and the easy level is written so young children can join in. Names stay optional, so a class or a party can play without typing anyone in.

In a classroom the starting-letter prompts work like the classroom game the British Council's TeachingEnglish site calls Stop the bus. There, players hunt for a word in each topic, all beginning with one letter. Here, the race is against the countdown, and own prompts can hold the week's topic words.

As an icebreaker or a party game for teenagers and adults, the hard level narrows the categories and the long countdown lets the tension build. Groups that want something to act or describe can switch to the forehead guessing game, which also runs on one phone.

The ticking and the explosion are made in the browser with the Web Audio API, which the W3C publishes, so there is nothing to download. Sound can be switched off in the settings. A phone in silent mode may also mute the page, depending on the phone and the browser, but the red screen still shows the bang.

Vibration follows the W3C Vibration API. Chrome and other Chromium browsers on Android buzz at the explosion, while Safari on an iPhone does not vibrate. During a round the screen stays on wherever the browser supports Screen Wake Lock, another W3C standard.

A Pause button stops the countdown, and a round also pauses by itself when the tab is hidden, for example by a call or the lock button. The page link keeps the settings, so a shared link opens the same game on another phone. Names and own prompts never go into the link, and nothing is stored on the device.

Some things are deliberately missing: there is no music, no checking of answers, no account and no advertising. There is also no online play across several phones, as everyone needs to be in the same room, passing the same one.