Pairly Play

Would You Rather

A Would You Rather is only worth asking if both answers are defensible. If nine people out of ten pick the same one, it is not a question — it is a fact with an extra step. Every pair here is genuinely hard.

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How to play

Two options appear. Everyone picks one, then everyone explains why. The explanation is the actual game; the choice is just what starts it.

There is no "both" and no "neither". The forced choice is the entire mechanism, and letting people opt out of it removes the thing that makes it interesting.

What makes a good pair

Both options need a real constituency. "Never listen to music again" against "never watch a film again" splits a room every time, because it depends on how you actually spend your evenings rather than on which is objectively worse.

They also need to be roughly the same length. A long option against a short one biases the choice before anyone has thought about it, which is why every pair here is written to a similar weight.

How to argue about it properly

The choice takes two seconds and the defence takes five minutes, which is the correct ratio. Ask what the person would actually lose, not which option sounds better. Those are different questions and only the first one is interesting.

In a group, have the minority explain first. They have thought about it more, because they already know they are outnumbered, and it stops the majority position being treated as obvious.

Where it works better than the other games

Would You Rather is the best of these for people who do not want to talk about themselves. Nothing is disclosed and nothing is confessed, yet you learn a great deal about how someone weighs things up.

That makes it the right choice for a first date, a work social, or any group with mixed levels of familiarity. It is also the one that survives being played in a car, because it needs no props, no screen-watching and no turn order.

It is the weakest choice if you already know someone extremely well and want to get somewhere new, because the hypotheticals stay hypothetical. For that, the deeper Truth or Dare cards do more.

20 Would You Rather questions

  1. 1.Would you rather never listen to music again — or — never watch a film again
  2. 2.Would you rather always be ten minutes early — or — always be twenty minutes late
  3. 3.Would you rather have everyone hear your thoughts for one day a year — or — have one person hear them all the time
  4. 4.Would you rather lose the ability to lie — or — lose the ability to keep a secret
  5. 5.Would you rather only ever eat your favourite meal — or — never eat the same meal twice
  6. 6.Would you rather have a permanently full inbox — or — have a permanently full camera roll
  7. 7.Would you rather always know when someone is lying to you — or — always get away with lying yourself
  8. 8.Would you rather be slightly too hot for the rest of your life — or — be slightly too cold for the rest of your life
  9. 9.Would you rather have to narrate everything you do out loud — or — have someone else narrate it for you
  10. 10.Would you rather never be able to sit down in public — or — never be able to stand still in public
  11. 11.Would you rather have one long weekend together every month — or — have one proper holiday together every year
  12. 12.Would you rather be told exactly what I'm thinking — or — keep guessing and getting it right
  13. 13.Would you rather relive our first conversation — or — skip forward to us ten years from now
  14. 14.Would you rather always be the one who says it first — or — always be the one who hears it first
  15. 15.Would you rather have a quiet night in that we both look forward to — or — have a night out that we'll still talk about in a year
  16. 16.Would you rather be given a compliment every day — or — be given a proper surprise once a month
  17. 17.Would you rather sort every disagreement the same night — or — sleep on it and always talk properly the next day
  18. 18.Would you rather live somewhere new together every two years — or — build one home and stay in it
  19. 19.Would you rather be understood completely by one person — or — be liked easily by almost everyone
  20. 20.Would you rather share a home that is always tidy and slightly tense — or — share one that is comfortably chaotic

Play with the full set

These are a sample. The game has the rest — no signup needed.

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Common questions

Can you pick both or neither?

No — that is the point. The forced choice is what makes people justify an answer, and an opt-out removes the reason to think about it at all.

How many people do you need?

Two works well, and it scales to twelve. With a bigger group it is worth having the minority side explain first.

Are there questions for couples specifically?

Yes. The romantic set asks about the two of you — how you would want to spend time, how you would want disagreements handled, where you would live.

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