How to play Sounds Right

Nobody has been told the answer

There is no reader and no card-holder. The subject and the question over it go to every screen at once — including a television with nobody sitting at it — and the true answer goes to none of them until the votes are in. That is the difference between this and the game it is adapted from, and it is what lets all of you write every round instead of taking it in turns to sit one out.

Which means the room is not being quizzed. Almost nobody has the answer, and being the person who does is worth two points once and nothing after that.

The set the subject came from is printed over it

Every subject arrives inside a frame: what a fear is a fear of, what a job nobody does any more actually involved, what a set of letters really stands for, what happens in a sport nobody at the table has played, what an everyday word used to mean. Five sets, and a sitting draws each subject from one it has not used, so five rounds are five different kinds of question rather than five of the same.

The frame is public on purpose. Told only the subject, most people cannot start; told what kind of thing is being asked, everybody can. It is also what keeps the true answer hidden — if the deck's line were the only one written in the deck's grammar, the room could find it without knowing anything.

Unsigned while you vote, signed the moment you stop

The answers come back shuffled in with the real one, in plain text, with nothing marking any of them. You cannot vote for your own, and the game says so rather than refusing a press. Picking one lifts it and a second press sends it, because a vote nobody can take back should cost two presses.

The instant the last vote lands, every line on the slate gets the name of whoever wrote it and a list of everybody who fell for it. Not in the scoreboard afterwards and not on request. It has to work that way: you are paid a point for each person your answer took in, and there is no way to hand somebody that point without saying whose answer it was.

Two people, one answer

It happens most rounds at a table of five, because a frame narrows what a convincing answer can be. They are merged into one line rather than shown as two identical buttons the room has to choose between at random, and at the reveal both names are under it.

Both are paid in full for everybody who picked it. Splitting it was considered and refused: each of them wrote something that worked, and somebody else independently writing the same thing is not a reason to pay either of them less.

Five subjects, and then it stops

A fixed number rather than a lap of the table, because everybody does the same thing every round — a lap would only mean that a table of eight plays for twice as long as a table of four, for no reason either table could name. Fifteen minutes at any size.

Whoever has most at the end takes it, and a level score is reported as a level score. There is no tiebreak, because there was nothing in the sitting the table was playing a tiebreak for.

Questions people ask

Do I have to know anything?

No, and the deck is written so that knowing helps less than writing well. Every subject is chosen to be something almost nobody has met and everybody can have a plausible go at, and no set is anybody's specialist subject — there is no sport results, no politics, no chart music and nothing from a national curriculum. If you do happen to know one, you get two points and everybody else gets on with lying.

Is what I write anonymous?

For one vote, and then never again. The slate is unsigned while the room picks, because a signed one would have people voting against whoever they know bluffs rather than for the answer they believe — and every author is named the second the last vote lands. That is the arrangement, the writing screen says so before you type a character, and it is not optional: the points you earn for fooling people cannot be paid without naming you.

What if I accidentally write the true answer?

You are told at the moment you press send, and asked for a different one. It is the one refusal in the game that is there for the player rather than for the room: the alternative is that your accident goes up beside the real thing and you are quietly paid for everybody who was fooled by something true, which is a fault that looks exactly like the game working.

Can we play it with a machine making up the numbers?

No, and it is not going to get one. A stand-in here would have to invent an answer that sounds like it came from this table, which is not a part of the game — it is the whole of it. Three people is the real floor; at two you know which answer is yours and so does the other person, and you are both tossing a coin.

Does anybody have to install anything to play Sounds Right?

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 Sounds Right?

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

How long does a game of Sounds Right 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.