How to play Near Enough

A question you can work out

Every question has a whole number for an answer and nobody at the table knows it. They are quantities rather than facts, written so that a person who has never heard the question can get within a factor of two of the answer from what is already in their head.

The round ends with the number and with a sentence saying how you could have got there. That sentence is the reason this deck exists: a round finishes with the table having been shown a way of working something out, rather than having been told a thing.

The guesses become the board

Forty-five seconds to write a number, in private, and nothing is shown to anybody until the last slip is in. Then they all go up together as one line, read downwards from the smallest, and two people who wrote the same number share a single position — you are about to bet on a number, not on a person.

Whoever wrote each one is printed beside it, deliberately. Backing the person who does this sort of thing for a living is half of what the second phase is for, and an anonymous line would leave the wager as arithmetic. At the head of the line sits one more position, for lower than all of them, and it takes the round on the questions where the whole table overshot.

One bet, and it is half the scoring

Forty seconds to put your money on one position. Your own number is allowed and is often the right call. Pick it, then confirm it — a bet cannot be taken back, so it costs two deliberate presses rather than one stray tap.

Let the clock run out and you have simply not bet. Nothing is staked on your behalf, because there is no honest default: a machine that put your money somewhere you never chose would be playing the interesting half of the game for you.

Then the answer. The winning position is the largest number that did not go over, and the sheet below pays the writing and the backing separately.

What it does not have

No chips, no stakes and no second wager. One number and one bet, seven questions, and the whole thing explains itself in the first round rather than in a paragraph before it.

And nothing to play against on your own. A machine estimating a quantity has either been told the answer or is picking at random, and there is no third thing for it to be, so this game seats people only.

Questions people ask

Is this trivia?

It looks like it for about ten seconds. Every question has a number for an answer, and not one of them is a fact anybody was taught — they are quantities you reason toward, and the deck is held to that by a test rather than by good intentions. The wager is the other half of the answer: somebody who worked nothing out at all can still take the round by reading what everybody else wrote.

What if I am hopeless with numbers?

Then hand your slip in blank and bet, which is a move rather than a forfeit. Two of the three ways to score in a round are for the wager, so a player who wrote nothing, looked at the line and backed somebody else's number wins it — and the engine's own tests hold that, in the one called "pays a bettor who wrote nothing at all".

Can I play it on my own?

No, and there is no stand-in chair. A machine guessing a quantity is either given the answer or rolling for it, and neither is a player anybody wants at the table. Three people is the real floor: with two, betting on somebody else's number is a choice of exactly one.

Does it work with people in different countries on the same call?

That is what the deck was written for. Nothing in it is national, nothing is in a currency, and nothing is in a unit half the room would have to convert. It is in English only, and that is a decision rather than an omission — the questions carry no idiom, so a second language would be the same questions with the words changed and one more place for a number to drift.

Does anybody have to install anything to play Near Enough?

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 Near Enough?

3 to 8 — best with five or six. A room seats up to 12.

How long does a game of Near Enough 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.