Would you rather game

One person reads a card aloud and everyone picks one of the two options, even when both are ridiculous or both are tempting. Then comes the part that makes it a game: say why, defend your pick and hear how the others see it. There are no right answers and nothing to win, so a round lasts as long as the talk does.

On this page, a game runs like this. One person holds the phone and reads the card, for example "have spaghetti for hair" or "have a carrot for a nose". Each player then takes a side: with a tap when playing alone, with a hand on the count of three, or privately as the phone goes round. The arguments follow, anyone persuaded may switch sides, and the phone moves on to the next card.

A game deals 20 cards unless another length is chosen, and none comes up twice in the same game. At the end, a group of three or more sees who sided with the majority most often, which pair answered most alike and who stood alone most often. Standing alone costs nothing: the ranking is a talking point, not a prize, and nobody is knocked out.

Cambridge Dictionary defines a dilemma as "a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two different things", and each card here is a small, harmless one. Each is also a hypothetical question: nobody really has to have spaghetti for hair, so the answer shows taste and imagination rather than circumstance.

No law, association or publisher sets rules for this folk game, so the ways to play, the limits and the tally on this page are the site's own choices. The name was in print by 1997 as the title of a book of absurd choices by Justin Heimberg and David Gomberg, as its Library of Congress catalogue record shows. This page is not affiliated with that book, or with any board game, card game or app sold under the name.

Before a game starts, "How you play" offers three ways to collect the choices. Each suits a different group, from one person on a bus to a full table at a party.

• Just play: one tap on a side records it and brings up the next card at once, and the results list each choice. It suits one person playing alone, or a group where one reader reads aloud and everyone argues without a tally.
• Show of hands: the reader may start a countdown from three, with a beep that can be switched off and a vibration on phones that allow it. Everyone shows A or B together, and the reader taps A or B beside each name; tapping the same letter again clears it.
• Pass the phone: players choose in seat order. The screen names whose turn it is, that player taps to bring up the buttons and chooses, and the screen locks again before the next player looks. Every secret pick stays hidden until the last one is in, and "Take back the last choice" undoes a slip.

When the reader marks hands, a player left unmarked counts as no answer for that card, and at least one player must be marked before "Next dilemma". With private picks the split appears once everyone has chosen, with the names on each side.

After every card in a group game, one line sums up the split: everyone on the same side, a tie, or the letter most chose. When one player stands alone against two or more, the line names that player and adds "Ask why!". It works as an icebreaker, because the lone player now has a reason to speak and the others a reason to listen.

A group game takes 2 to 12 players with names of up to 24 characters, and a blank name plays as "Player 1", "Player 2" and so on. "Undo" steps back, first clearing the picks on the card shown, then reopening the last card answered.

The Screen Wake Lock API, a World Wide Web Consortium draft, keeps the screen awake during a game where the browser supports it. A phone passed round the table therefore does not go dark halfway through a card.

For a game where the group points at a friend instead of choosing between options, who is most likely to runs on one phone in much the same way.

The game holds 484 dilemmas in 10 decks of 48 to 50 cards each, all written for this site in British English. A new game starts with five decks ticked, Funny, Food, Superpowers, Friends and Travel, which hold 241 cards between them.

"Tick every deck" and "Clear the decks" switch every deck at once. Every card is family friendly: none mentions drink, drugs, sex, death, violence, looks, politics, religion, brands or real people, and there is no adult, "hot" or drinking deck.

Funny is the silliest deck, where both sides of a card are usually absurd.

Food settles the arguments of British kitchens, such as "put the milk in your tea first" or "put the milk in after the tea". Superpowers trades one gift for another, as in "read people's minds" or "see five minutes into the future". Friends covers sleepovers, holidays and plans, while Travel runs from "spend a week in Cornwall" or "spend a week in the Scottish Highlands" to trips across the world.

Tough choices sets two good things or two bad things against each other, and Deep questions turns to time, memory and what matters most.

Each game shuffles the ticked decks with crypto.getRandomValues, a browser method from the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Cryptography specification. Rejection sampling makes every order equally likely. No card comes twice within a game, but each fresh game shuffles again, so a card can return later. "Skip this dilemma" puts a card aside without counting it.

The Kids deck holds 48 cards set in a younger player's world of pets, school, sweets and summer holidays. Because every deck is family friendly, teens and adults can play from the same pile.

In England, the Department for Education's English programmes of study set spoken language requirements for Key Stages 1 and 2, the strand many schools call speaking and listening. Pupils are taught to "articulate and justify answers, arguments and opinions" and to "consider and evaluate different viewpoints", and a dilemma with no right answer asks for both.

In a classroom the page can go on the board or stay on a teacher's phone. With Show of hands the whole class answers at once, and the "Ask why!" line hands the floor to the one pupil on the other side. For a lesson without screens, the list panel prints every card of the ticked decks.

For a speaking task built on a story rather than a choice, the story dice roller deals picture dice for pupils to narrate from.

The Christmas deck holds 50 dilemmas about British Christmas customs, food, presents and winter, and none of them is about faith.

At a family gathering, Christmas can be ticked together with Kids or Food, so the youngest and the oldest at the table both get cards that suit them. Boxing Day gets cards too, such as "spend Boxing Day at the sales" or "spend Boxing Day on the sofa".

Marking raised hands keeps the phone with one reader, so nothing has to travel across a full dinner table. For a louder game once the plates are cleared, hot potato runs on the same phone.

With two players the results drop the ranking and show a single score: the number of cards both chose alike, over the number played.

The Couples deck holds 48 dilemmas about dates, evenings in and time together, and any other deck works for two as well. Here is how Olivia and Noah get on with its first five cards, each side marked by the reader.

They chose the same side on cards 1, 3 and 4, so the result reads "Same answer: 3 / 5". The cards they split on, the second and fifth, are where the conversation starts on a date night.

Pass the phone suits two players too: each partner chooses privately and the split appears only when both have picked, so neither can copy the other.

In a game of three or more players, the results rank everyone by how often they sided with the most popular choice. Each figure is written as those picks over the cards answered, such as 4 / 5.

• With the majority: the cards on which a player sided with the majority. Players level on it share a place, so two leaders are both first and the next player is third.
• Alone: how often a player was a minority of one, the only person choosing an option while two or more chose the other.
• Most alike: the pair who chose the same side most often, shown as matching picks out of the cards both answered; several pairs share it on a tie.
• The odd one out: the player alone on a side most often, several on a tie, and nobody if no one was ever alone.

Take Olivia, Noah, Amelia and Leo playing the first five cards of the Friends deck, with the reader marking each hand.

Everyone chose A on the first card, and the second split 2 to 2, a tie with nobody in the majority. Each of the last three cards left one player alone: Leo on the third and fifth, Amelia on the fourth.

Olivia and Noah share first place with 4 / 5, so Amelia is third, not second. The same pair chose alike on every card, which makes them the most alike (5 / 5), and Leo, alone on 2 cards, is the player the results single out.

A split often surprises the people in it, and psychology has a name for the reason: the false consensus effect. It is the habit of overestimating how many others share one's own choice. In Study 4 of their 1977 paper, Ross, Greene and House asked 80 Stanford undergraduates to walk round campus for 30 minutes wearing a sandwich-board sign.

Those who agreed estimated that 62.2% of their peers would agree too, while those who refused put that share at 33%; both figures combine the two signs used. Many Labs 2, published in 2018, repeated one of the paper's two-option stories, set in a supermarket, with 7,205 participants. People who made the first choice estimated that 69.19% of others would make it, against 43.35% among those who made the other.

Up to 200 dilemmas of a group's own can join the decks, typed one per line in the "Your own dilemmas" box, with up to 70 characters per option.

• The options are split by the word "or" or by a | sign. Both "sleep in a treehouse or on a boat" and "own a lighthouse | own a windmill" work.
• An opening such as "Would you rather" is taken off, so full questions pasted from elsewhere are read as well.
• Lines without two options are counted and shown under the box, which makes a missing "or" easy to spot.
• "Play only my dilemmas" leaves the decks out, for a game made entirely of your own questions.

The text box itself is never stored or sent. Once a game starts, its dealt cards stay in this browser's local storage, own ones included, along with the names and picks. They stay until the next game begins, so a reload or a locked screen loses nothing. The WHATWG's HTML Living Standard defines that web storage.

For a printable would you rather sheet, "List and print the dilemmas" shows every dilemma in play as a full question, own ones included. "Print the list" then lays them out in two columns. A printed list serves a classroom, a party without phones or a long car journey.

The built-in cards ask about choices, never about anyone in the room. That keeps a game inclusive: the most a player risks is being the lone voice on one card.

The NSPCC's Child Protection in Sport Unit lists "humiliating" and "excluding a child from a friendship group or activities" among the forms of emotional bullying. A card written about a player, or a vote used to leave someone out, would cross that line, so the decks stay with harmless choices.

Own cards are written by the players, so the built-in rule does not reach them. "Skip this dilemma" moves past any card that lands badly without counting it. The line asking a lone player why is an invitation, and the group is free to let it pass.