A round
One letter, twelve categories, one clock
A letter is drawn and twelve categories go up — a thing in a kitchen, something you pack, a reason to be late. You write one answer for each, and every answer has to begin with the drawn letter.
An article does not count against you, so "a kettle" is a perfectly good K.
Nothing is visible while the clock runs
Not one answer, not to anybody. The table sees how many boxes you have filled and nothing whatsoever about what is in them.
When the clock stops every sheet turns over at once and lands side by side, one row per category — which is the moment the game actually happens.
Anything two of you wrote is worth nothing to either of you
That is the whole of the scoring, and it inverts the instinct: the person who writes the first thing everybody thinks of scores nothing at all.
The machine decides whether two answers are the same thing and is deliberately timid about it — it folds "fried egg" and "fried eggs" together and will not guess at anything cleverer. Whether an answer fits the category is not its business: anybody can say it does not count, and more than half of you carries it.
On the sheet
Questions people ask
Who decides whether an answer counts?
The room. The software only ever decides whether two people wrote the same thing, and it errs towards saying they did not. Every judgement about whether an answer fits its category is a vote, and the result carries the name of whoever called it.
How long is a round?
Two, three or four letters at ninety seconds, two minutes or three, agreed in the lobby before the first letter is drawn. Fifteen minutes covers a full sitting with the arguing included.
Does anybody have to install anything to play Category Rush?
No. It runs in the browser everyone already has open. One person opens a room, reads out the six-character code or pastes the link into the channel, and everyone else is at the table in a couple of seconds.
Do we need accounts?
No. There is no sign-up, no password and no email address anywhere in the flow. You pick a name when you sit down, and that is the whole of it.
How many people can play Category Rush?
2 to 12 — best with four or five. A room seats up to 12.
How long does a game of Category Rush take?
About 15 minutes, which is the length of a coffee break rather than the length of a games night. Nobody is the host in the sense of holding the controls, so a round finishes whether or not everyone is still looking at it.
Does it work over a video call?
That is what it is for. The game is on the screen and the talking is on the call — nobody has to describe a board to anybody, and the parts that must stay private stay on the server rather than being read out.
Credit where it is due
Adapted from Scattergories, published by Hasbro. The category list is our own.