Games like Pointless you can play with friends

What makes Pointless different

On the show, 100 people were given 100 seconds to name as many answers as they could to a question, say countries in Africa. A contestant's score is the number of those 100 people who gave the same answer, and the lowest score wins. An answer nobody in the survey gave is a pointless answer: it scores zero and adds money to the jackpot.

That simple twist changes how you think. You cannot just say the first answer that comes to mind, because everyone else will have said it too. You have to go to the second, third or tenth answer, the one you know is right but suspect most people forgot. It rewards knowing a topic widely, not just knowing the headline facts.

That is the feeling the games below try to capture.

Nichenaut: Pointless rules, played online

Nichenaut is a free browser game built on the same idea. Everyone gets the same prompt and types one answer. Every right answer scores, and the rarer it is, the further your astronaut flies off Earth. The only difference from the show is the direction of the numbers: in Nichenaut a high score is good, so a rare answer gives you more points rather than fewer.

Answers land in tiers:

• Liftoff (10 points): the answer everyone reached for.
• Space junk (15 points): the answer that feels clever, except that everyone else had the same idea.
• Orbit (30 points): solid, up there with the crowd.
• Deep space (60 points): properly uncommon.
• Interstellar (85 points): almost nobody comes this far.
• Supernova (100 points): the one nobody saw coming.
• Stalled (0 points): wrong, or no answer.

Space junk is our favourite tier because it is so Pointless. Ask a room for a games console and someone will confidently type “Sega Dreamcast”, sure it is a deep cut. So did lots of other people.

Each prompt has a long list of accepted answers, often hundreds or more than a thousand, and the tiers are tuned from what players actually type. Some prompts that play very much like a Pointless round:

• Name a country in Africa
• Name a capital city
• Name a UK prime minister
• Name a Beatles song
• Name a famous painting or artwork (by its title)
• Name a character from a Charles Dickens novel
• Name a bone in the human body
• Name an Indian dish

You can play it several ways:

• With friends: host a mission, send the room code, and everyone answers on their own phone. Up to 25 people in a room.
• On the telly: choose big screen mode and put the game on a TV or laptop everyone can see, while players answer on their phones. Very close to a living room game show.
• On your own: Solo has themed missions of seven prompts and an endless mode, and Today's Mission gives everyone the same seven prompts each day.

Play a Pointless style round now

Scattergories

The classic board game is the closest offline cousin. You roll a letter, then write an answer for each of a list of categories that starts with that letter: a fruit, a band, something in a kitchen. When time is up, everyone reads out their answers, and any answer that matches someone else's is crossed out. Only unique answers score.

It is brilliant at a table and works well on a video call too, since all you need is a letter, a list and a timer. The letter rule makes it more of a word game than a knowledge game, which suits some groups better.

Family Fortunes, the opposite game

Family Fortunes (Family Feud in the US) is Pointless in reverse: you score by guessing the most popular survey answer. It is worth knowing about because it makes a great pairing. Play a round of each and the same group of people has to switch from “what would everyone say” to “what would nobody say”. It is harder than it sounds.

There are plenty of Family Feud apps and board games. To do it at home, ask your group to each write the first answer that comes to mind for a category, then try to guess the top three before revealing.

List quizzes on Sporcle

Sporcle is the home of the “name all the” quiz: every country in Europe, every element, every Best Picture winner. It is not a Pointless game as such, but it is the best practice there is for one. Doing a few list quizzes on a topic shows you which answers you always forget, and those are exactly the ones that score on Pointless.

Some quizzes can be played together on a call: one person shares their screen and everyone shouts answers.

How to play Pointless at home

No board game needed. This works at a table or on a call, with four to twenty people.

1. Pick a category with lots of right answers: countries in Asia, Disney films, words that rhyme with cat, Premier League clubs.
2. Everyone writes one answer in secret. Give 30 seconds. On a call, people can type it into the group chat at the same moment, or write it down and hold it up.
3. Reveal. Read out every answer. Your score is how many other people gave the same one.
4. Lowest total wins after five or six rounds. Wrong answers score a penalty, say 10 points.
5. A pointless answer (correct, and nobody else had it) wins a bonus, a sweet, or the right to pick the next category.

The weak spot is that a small group is a small survey. With five people, lots of answers end up pointless by accident. That is where an online game helps: the answer lists and tiers in Nichenaut come from far more players than your living room.

Tips for finding the pointless answer

• Skip the first three. Whatever comes to mind first comes to everyone else's mind first too.
• Go regional. For countries, think of the corner of the map people forget. For cities, the second city rather than the capital.
• Go technical. Bones like the vomer, elements like hafnium, words from your subject at school. Specialist answers are rare by nature.
• Be sure it is right. A rare answer is only worth something if it is correct. When in doubt, take a slightly more common answer you are certain of.