Who is most likely to game

Each turn puts one question on the screen, and whoever holds the phone reads it aloud. The group answers in the way chosen under How the group answers, and the phone records who the question went to before dealing the next. Cambridge Dictionary explains likely as something that "will probably happen or is expected", so every question asks for a prediction about a habit, not a fact.

• Point on three: everyone points at once after a 3 seconds countdown, and the reader taps the name with the most fingers. A new game starts in this mode.
• Secret vote: the phone goes round the table in seat order, each player taps a name in private, and the votes appear only after the last ballot.
• Couple and shoe game: two partners sit back to back and each raises a shoe, while the host taps whose shoe went up.

Knowing how to play who is most likely to comes down to one rule: each question goes to the person it fits best. No association, publisher or public body in the UK sets or describes rules for it, so the countdown, the tally and the titles described here are this site's own choices.

While a game is open, the screen stays awake wherever the browser supports Screen Wake Lock, an interface specified by the World Wide Web Consortium. A phone passed round the table therefore does not lock halfway through a question.

In the default mode the whole group answers at the same moment, so nobody can wait to see where the others point.

1. The reader, whoever holds the phone, reads the question aloud and taps Count to three.
2. A 3 seconds countdown runs on the screen, with a beep each second when Beep for the countdown is on, and ends on "Point!". Phones that allow it vibrate as well.
3. Everyone points at the player the question fits best, all at once.
4. The reader taps the name that got the most fingers, or several names when they draw, then Next question.

When two or more players draw for the most fingers, the reader marks them all and the question counts as won by each. If nobody fits, or the group cannot agree, Nobody: next question records the question with no winner.

The phone never sees the fingers, only the names tapped. Each marked name counts once, however many hands pointed at it, so in this mode a player's votes always equal the questions won.

Whether a player may point at themselves is left to the table, and so is who reads. Undo first clears the names being marked, then takes back the last recorded question.

In the secret vote each player answers in private, and no ballot shows before the reveal that follows the last one.

1. The screen names the next voter in seat order, for example "Pass the phone to Olivia".
2. That player taps "I'm Olivia: show the names", picks one name, and the names hide again before the phone moves on.
3. After the last ballot the screen shows "All votes are in", the votes for each player and "Most votes" with the leading name or names.
4. Change the last vote takes back the last ballot, so a slip can be put right before Next question.

"Players may vote for themselves" is ticked in a new game. With it off, each voter's own name is left out of their ballot, so every vote goes to someone else.

Ballots can split evenly at the top. Every player level on the most votes then wins the question, and it counts in each of their tallies.

Here the vote count matters more than in pointing. Over a whole game, the votes a player receives separate players who are level on questions won, as the worked example below shows.

The game holds 399 questions in 8 decks, all written for British players, and no question appears in two decks.

A group game starts with Friends, Family, Travel and Silly ticked, 200 questions in all. A couple game starts with Couples and Wedding, 99 questions written about two people. Choose every deck and Clear the decks switch every deck at once.

Each game deals 10, 15, 20, 30 or 50 questions, 15 unless changed, or fewer when the ticked decks hold fewer. The pile is shuffled with the browser's cryptographic random numbers, from the getRandomValues method in the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Cryptography specification. No question comes up twice in a game, and Skip this question brings the next one without counting.

Questions of the group's own go in the Your own questions box, where they mix with the decks or replace them.

Every question in the ticked decks also opens as a list on the page. Print the questions turns it into a printable sheet of full questions in two columns, for a game read out at a table without a phone.

Each question goes to the player the group picks. That is the one with the most fingers on the count of three, the most ballots in a private vote, or the partner whose shoe both partners raise. A draw at the top gives the question to everyone level there, and a question with no pick goes to nobody. When the questions run out, the tally ranks players by questions won, then by votes received across the game. Players level on both share a place, so two leaders are both first and the next player is third. Every player who won a question also gets a title, "Most likely to" plus the question won most clearly. A question won alone beats a shared one, then a bigger share of the votes counts, then the earlier question. A player who won nothing gets no title, and nothing beyond the ranking is at stake.

Take Olivia, Noah, Amelia and Leo voting in private on the first 3 questions of the Friends deck, with self votes allowed. Each question collects 4 ballots.

Noah and Amelia each win 1 question and receive 4 votes, so they share place 1. Olivia also wins 1 but receives 3 votes and takes place 3, since 2 players share the place above. Leo wins none and takes place 4.

The 3 players who won a question each take it as their title, so Olivia's reads "Most likely to reply to the group chat a week later". Leo gets "No title this time".

Copy the result puts the places, names, questions won in brackets and titles on the clipboard with the page link, ready for a group chat. Play again, same players deals a fresh set of questions to the same players.

The couple sit back to back, each holding one of their own shoes and one of their partner's, and raise the shoe of whoever a question fits. At a wedding reception the host reads the questions, and the guests see at once whether the two shoes match.

No rulebook or public body describes the shoe game. It is a reception custom with no fixed rules, and the version on this page is the site's own.

Couple and shoe game takes exactly 2 names. For each question the host taps whose shoe each partner raised; the second pick waits for the first, and the first can still be changed. Matching shoes show "Same answer" with the name and give that partner the question, while different shoes show "Different answers" and nobody gets it.

Here is how Olivia and Noah get on with the first 3 questions of the Couples deck.

• "end up with the whole duvet by morning": both shoes raised are Noah's, so Noah wins it.
• "leave the cupboard doors open": the shoes raised are Olivia's and Noah's, so nobody gets it.
• "pick the film and then fall asleep": both shoes raised are Olivia's, so Olivia wins it.

The results then read 2 / 3 under Same answers: the questions the couple agreed on, out of those answered.

Searches for wedding questions often use who is more likely to instead, since only two people are compared. The game keeps one question form, and its Couples and Wedding decks are written about two people.

The Mr and Mrs quiz, a British hen party and wedding favourite, is a different game: one partner answers questions about the other, and the answers are checked. For a letter count on two names, the love calculator works from a playground rule instead of a vote.

Each deck has a setting in mind, and any mix of them can be ticked before a game starts.

• Hen do: Cambridge Dictionary defines a hen party as "a party for a woman who is going to get married soon, to which only her female friends are invited". Friends, Travel and Silly fit a group game there.
• Work party, team building or a first meeting: the Work deck keeps to office habits, such as "reply to an email at midnight".
• School trip or sleepover: the School deck covers homework, PE kit and teachers, such as "call a teacher Mum or Dad by accident".
• Road trip: the Travel deck runs from packing to the departure gate, such as "pack the night before and forget their toothbrush" and "get to the airport four hours early".
• Family Christmas: the Family deck stays with home life, such as "hog the TV remote" and "fall asleep on the sofa after Sunday lunch".

Oxford Learner's Dictionaries describes an icebreaker as "a thing that you do or say, such as a game or a joke, to make people feel more relaxed". The entry adds "especially at the beginning of a meeting, party, etc.", and a few rounds of questions about harmless habits match that description.

For a game of clues rather than votes, the forehead guessing game also runs from one phone, held to the guesser's forehead.

Every built-in question teases a habit or a daydream, and none is about bodies, looks, money, drink, drugs, religion, politics, illness or crime. An automatic check runs through every language's questions for blocked words, and none of them names a brand.

NSPCC Sport, the NSPCC's site on safeguarding in sport, counts name calling, banter and belittling as verbal bullying, and humiliating as emotional bullying. Its list of cyberbullying includes "voting against someone in an abusive poll", and it notes that bullying can be based on "appearance and mannerisms".

A game that ranks people by a show of hands sits close to that line. That is why the questions stay with harmless habits, and why every built-in one is family friendly.

Yearbook superlatives in the United States show the same risk. In May 2013 the Student Press Law Center reported a school district ordering a yearbook reprinted after a "Biggest Flirt" superlative was linked to the harassment of an eighth grader.

Skip this question moves past any question that lands badly without counting it. Own questions are written by the players themselves, so the built-in rule does not reach them.

Games that ask who fits a description have a cousin in child psychology, with a name to match. Encyclopaedia Judaica credits Julius Bernard Maller with devising the "Guess Who" technique in 1929, "a sociometric test for use with children".

J. L. Moreno's book Who Shall Survive?, published in 1934, describes the sociometric test differently. In his words it "requires an individual to choose his associates for any group of which he is or might become a member".

Moreno's test asks whom a person would choose to be with, not who fits a description. It is a relative of the party game rather than its ancestor.

Class superlatives, voted by classmates for American school yearbooks, are the nearest custom to how a game ends here. The sources checked for this page give them no starting date, and they are listed under Sources.