How to play Round of Ten

Ten questions, and everybody answers all of them

One question at a time, on every screen at once, with four answers under it. You press one. So does everybody else, at the same moment, without seeing what anybody has picked — the only thing the room can see while a question is open is how many answers are already in.

The question closes the instant the last answer arrives, or when the window runs out, whichever comes first. There is no turn order to wait through and nothing to take in turns, which is why the running time does not move when the table gets bigger.

Right pays, and quick pays more

A right answer is worth ten times the question number: ten on the first, a hundred on the tenth. On top of that there is a bonus for how much of the window was still left when you pressed — press immediately and the question is worth double, press as it closes and it is worth its face value.

The bonus can never be larger than the answer itself, and that is on purpose. It means a slow right answer beats a quick wrong one on every question, at every speed, so hurrying is a tiebreak rather than the game. A wrong answer is worth nothing, and so is a pass, and so is letting the window close.

The later questions are where it is decided

Because the value climbs, nobody is out of it at the halfway mark. Somebody who has got the first five wrong can still take the sitting on the last three, which keeps six people paying attention for ten minutes rather than four.

Passing is a real move rather than a failure state. It costs exactly what a wrong answer costs — nothing — and it closes the question a little sooner for everybody else, which is the polite thing to do when you genuinely have no idea.

Nothing in it is something you were taught

Every question is a quantity, a size, a comparison or a consequence you can reason your way to from things you already have. There is no history in it, no sport, no pop culture, no brands and no country. That is a rule about the deck rather than a claim about the questions being easy, and it is the reason this game exists in a product that had refused a quiz twice.

Every answer arrives with a single line saying how you could have got there. It is there because a quiz that cannot say why an answer is the answer is a quiz that has to be taken on trust — and because it is the only way anybody at the table can check the rule above for themselves, rather than believing it.

Questions people ask

Is this not just a pub quiz?

It has the shape of one and not the content. A pub quiz asks what you were told; every question here asks what follows from something you already have — how heavy a bucket of water is, how many chairs fit along a wall, how many pages make a metre of shelf. The test each question had to pass was whether somebody who has never met it can get there by thinking, and the line of working shown after each answer is how you check that we meant it.

Will it be unfair to somebody who did not grow up here?

That is the exact objection this game was built against, and it is the reason for the rules the deck is written to: no history, no sport, no pop culture, no brands, no named place, and no unit anybody has to convert before they can start thinking. What we can honestly claim is that nothing rewards having been taught a particular fact in a particular country. What we cannot claim is that everybody will find them equally easy — somebody who does arithmetic all day will be quicker, and the scoring is built so that being quicker is a tiebreak rather than the game.

Does a bigger table make it longer?

No. Everybody answers every question at the same moment, so twelve people take exactly as long as three, and the question moves on as soon as the last answer is in. It is one of the few things here you can put in front of a whole department without the running time changing.

Can I play it on my own?

Yes, and it is the same ten questions with the same scoring rather than a reduced version. What it has not got is a machine to play against, and it is not going to get one: a stand-in in a quiz either knows the answer or presses at random, and neither of those is an opponent. On your own it is a score out of a possible eleven hundred, and the deck is large enough that two sittings in an afternoon share no questions.

What happens if I miss one?

Nothing worse than getting it wrong. If the window closes on you it counts as a pass, which is worth zero, and the sitting carries straight on to the next question — nobody is knocked out and nobody has to wait for you. Because the later questions are worth so much more than the early ones, missing a couple at the start costs less than it feels like it should.

Does anybody have to install anything to play Round of Ten?

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 Round of Ten?

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

How long does a game of Round of Ten 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.