How to play Hands Up

Two options, and everybody answers at once

A question comes up with two everyday answers and no correct one, and everybody answers it at the same moment, in private, with thirty-five seconds on the clock. Nothing is visible to anybody — not one hand, not to the person who dealt it — until the last slip is down.

You can put a blank slip down instead, and it is what the clock puts down for you if you say nothing. It costs you the round and it costs nobody else anything: a blank is on neither side, so it cannot move the split that somebody else is being scored against.

The side is not what you are scored on. The number is.

Your answer is two things and both go down blind: the side you take, and how many of the table you think will be on it with you, yourself included. Being in the majority is worth nothing on its own — plenty of people are in the majority by accident, and the game is not interested in them.

Say it will be four and find four, and you take three. Out by one is worth one, because "about half of us" is a real read of a room and getting it nearly right is not the same as guessing.

And being the only hand is worth points

The one person on a side takes two more, on top of whatever the prediction paid. Saying it will be just you, and being just you, is five — the biggest number in the game, and it belongs to whoever knew they were the odd one out before the hands went up.

It pays whether or not the number landed, because the bonus is for what you did rather than what you called. The exception is a side left alone by arithmetic: if everybody else put a blank slip down, nobody stood on their own against anybody, and nothing is paid for it.

Ten questions, and that is the sitting

There is no points target and no race to a number. Every question is worth the same and it ends when the tenth one is done, which is the right shape for a game whose whole content is a room changing its mind about itself — a target would make the first three questions matter more than the last three.

Between questions the split stays face up, so the table can still be arguing about the last one while the next is dealt.

Questions people ask

Does it ask me to say anything about myself?

No, and it is written so that it cannot. Every question is a choice between two everyday things and the deck is held to a charter that keeps out anything a person could regret answering in front of colleagues. All anybody ever learns about you is which of two buttons you pressed, and they learn it at the same moment you learn what they pressed.

Do I need to know the people I am playing with?

For half of it, yes — reading how a room will split is easier when you have sat with them for a year, and somebody who started on Monday will be worse at it for a fortnight. The other half is not like that at all. Being the only hand on your side pays two whether or not you called it, and knowing your own mind is the whole of what that takes.

How is it different from Most of Us?

Most of Us wants you in the biggest group, so the game there is thinking like everybody else. This one asks you to say what the room will do and then scores the number rather than the side — so the majority is just where you happened to land, and going your own way, which earns nothing next door, is worth the most points here.

Can I play it on my own?

No, and there is no stand-in chair to make up the numbers either. A machine would have to guess how a room it has never met is going to divide, which is precisely the thing the game asks a person to do, and faking it from a table of frequencies would be a different game with the interesting part removed. Three people is the smallest table it will deal to.

Does anybody have to install anything to play Hands Up?

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 Hands Up?

3 to 12 — best with six. A room seats up to 12.

How long does a game of Hands Up take?

About 10 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.