Host guide
Run the room.
Make the calls.
The Host is a claimed role on your own device, not a seat on a team. You pick the questions, keep the pace, and rule every answer. The app runs the timers, holds the state, and keeps score. This page is what you need for a first game night; the full rules live at How to play.
Tonight’s checklist
What to have in the room
- A TV, projector, or laptop for the Big ScreenOptional — you can host from a phone.
- Your own device for the Host screenIt shows the answers. Nobody else looks at it.
- A phone per playerOne device per team is the minimum.
- Two to six teams
- Three category ideas per team
- Stable Wi-Fi
Setup
Two ways to set up the room
Recommended
Party Mode with a TV
- 1Open the site on the TV, projector, or shared laptop.
- 2Choose Start Party Mode. That screen becomes the Big Screen and shows the room code and QR.
- 3Players scan the QR or type the six-character code on their phones.
- 4One person claims Host on their own device. Everyone else founds or joins a team.
No shared screen
No TV? Host from a phone
- 1On the home page, choose No TV? Host from your phone.
- 2Claim the Host role, then share the room code or join link.
- 3Players follow the match on their own devices while you run the room.
- 4Keep the Host display facing you. Private answers and question tools live there.
Keep the Host screen private. It shows candidate questions, expected answers, and ruling tools. The private Host link controls the whole match, so never share it. Give the room the code, the join link, or the Big Screen link instead.
Format
Pick a format
Best first game
Quick
3 categories · 2 tiers · 30-second discussion · AI house off
6 questions and 9 base points per team.
Full experience
Classic
4 categories · 4 tiers · 60-second discussion · AI house on
16 questions and 40 base points per team.
Tune the room
Custom
1–4 tiers · AI house on or off · your own timers
Discussion 10–300s, steal 20–30s, challenge window 5–120s, sudden death 10–300s. Plus Final Lock difficulty, the failed-challenge penalty, and Chaos Mode.
First game, or five or six teams? Choose Quick and leave Chaos Mode off. Six questions per team is enough to learn the steal rhythm without the night running long.
Base points are not a ceiling. Full-value steals push a score higher; wrong steals and optional penalties can push it below zero.
Say this
Explain the rules in 60 seconds
Each Captain secretly picks three categories. Two of them go to your rivals. One comes back to you.
You play one category at a time, climbing through the tiers. Harder tiers are worth more: 1, 2, 3, then 4 points.
Talk it over as a team, but your Captain locks one answer. Once it is locked, it is locked.
Miss, pass, or let the clock run out, and every other team gets a shot at a steal. The first correct steal takes the full points.
A wrong steal costs you 1 point. Do not guess blind.
Each team has one challenge flag. Use it if you think your own answer was ruled wrong unfairly. Win the challenge and you keep the flag. Lose it and the flag is gone.
Highest score wins. If the top is tied, we go to Final Lock: same question, everyone answers at once, until exactly one team gets it.
I am the Host. I pick the questions and I make the rulings. The app keeps score.
Playing Quick? Line two becomes “1, then 2 points”: Quick stops after the second tier.
Categories
Getting categories ready
Broad and factual wins
“Pixar films” beats “Movies”. “Things my dog does” produces no fair questions at all. Subjects with real facts behind them generate the cleanest tiers.
Captains lock privately
Each Captain locks exactly three distinct categories on their own phone inside a 90-second window. If a table needs a moment, you can grant one 45-second extension.
Two of three go to rivals
Only one of a team’s picks comes back to them. The other two are played by rivals, so a team should pick what it knows deeply: those are the ones it can steal back.
The AI house category
Classic deals each team a fourth category on a distinct domain axis. Quick leaves it off. In Custom, toggle it before category assignment; it locks after that.
During the game
The Host loop
- 01
Curate before reveal
Every tier offers 4 candidate questions. Prefer the one with a single defensible answer. Weak batch? Regenerate for a fresh set, up to 3 times per tier.
- 02
Reveal and watch the clock
Timers are shared deadlines set by the server, so no phone is disadvantaged by its own clock. Pause is one tap if the room needs it; resume is yours too.
- 03
Compare, then rule
The ruling panel places the submitted answer beside the expected answer and any accepted alternatives. Accept a defensible answer even when the generated one is narrow. AI verification only advises.
- 04
Work the steal queue
Steals arrive in server receipt order and you rule them one at a time. The first correct steal wins the full tier value and ends the queue. Each steal you rule wrong costs that team 1 point; answers you never reach cost nothing.
- 05
Resolve challenges
Only the team whose own answer or steal was rejected can challenge, and only while it still holds its flag. Success corrects the credit at normal value and keeps the flag. Failure retires the flag: 0 points by default, or a flat −1 if you enabled that setting.
- 06
Keep the Host screen to yourself
It holds the candidate pool, the expected answers, and the ruling tools. Rival phones stay masked, and the Big Screen only ever shows the answer you are ruling on right now.
When something goes wrong
Fix it without restarting
A phone dropped mid-question
If the device holding the answer drops, the game pauses on its own and the clock freezes. Ask the player to reopen the same room link in the same browser: their seat comes back automatically, and the recovery record lasts 12 hours.
If they cannot get back, reassign Captaincy to a teammate from the paused-recovery panel, then tap Resume. Nothing resumes until you say so. While any device is offline its controls lock, but the last confirmed state stays visible on it.
A question is bad
Before reveal: tap Regenerate for a fresh batch of 4 candidates. You get up to 3 fresh batches per tier.
While it is live: throw the question out and pick a replacement. Nobody is charged for it.
After a ruling: correct an obvious error to move the credit, or void the question to wipe it from the ledger. Any Chaos powers spent on a question that is thrown out or voided are refunded.
The Host device died
Reopen the room in the same browser and your Host role is restored; the recovery record lasts 12 hours. The Host screen also offers Copy private Host link, which opens the Host screen directly on the device you paste it into. That is exactly why it must stay private: anyone holding that link controls the match.
The room cannot see the TV
The Big Screen is read-only, and nobody plays from it. From the Host screen, use Copy Big Screen link and open it in a browser on any laptop or TV. It shows the join code and QR in the lobby and the shared show once play starts, without any Host-only or rival-private information.
A Captain has not locked categories
The 90-second window is advisory: expiry never invents categories for a team. Give the table one 45-second extension from the Host screen. If a rival table is stalling, remember the extension is shared and can be used once.
Ready to host?
Start a game, put the code on a screen, and claim Host from your own device. Everyone else scans in.