Against the Grain: the rarest answer wins

How a match works

Against the Grain is a question game where being right isn’t enough: you have to be right differently from everyone else. Each question has a finite list of valid answers, such as all the seas or all the European capitals, and the points depend on how many times each one has been given by people who played before you, in any match and in any language. There’s no judge: we start from our own estimate and then the players correct it, by playing.

1. Choose how many questions to play, 4, 6, 8 or 10, and the mode: Blind or Live.
2. The question appears and you have 30 seconds to answer.
3. Type your answer: valid ones appear after the first two letters and you tap one. You never see the whole list, because the fun is in coming up with it yourself.
4. If nothing comes to mind, tap “Can’t think of one: pass” or let the time run out: that question is worth 0 points.
5. Once everyone has answered, the answers appear one at a time, from the lowest score to the highest, followed straight away by a quick leaderboard.
6. After the last question comes the podium: whoever scored the most points overall wins.

How points are worked out

The points come from everybody’s answers. The game looks at how many people chose each answer and places yours in one of five fixed bands.

For the curious, here’s the calculation: take the share of all the answers ever given to that question that went to your answer or to rarer ones. Up to 10% is Super rare, up to 30% Rare, up to 55% Average, up to 80% Common, and anything above is Obvious. That way, an answer given by a few people stays rare even if many others have never been chosen, and an answer that dominates all the others ends up at the bottom.

There are two special cases. Once a question has collected at least 30 answers, the least given one of all earns a 30-point bonus, while the most popular one loses 10, never going below zero. A question with few answers, on the other hand, also relies on our own estimate of how popular each answer is. That estimate counts for less and less as people play, and from 100 answers on only the real ones count.

The counts are updated at the end of the match, not after each answer. During a match, then, the same answer is worth the same points to everyone, whatever order you answer in.

Blind or Live: two different games

Blind

Everyone answers without seeing the others’ answers, which all appear together when the question ends. The same answer can be given by several people, and in that case they all get the same points. It’s the calmer mode: it rewards whoever digs something out of their memory that the others didn’t consider, and the funniest moment is the reveal, when you discover you all thought of the same thing.

Live

Answers show up as they arrive and an answer already given can’t be used again: it stays in the list, crossed out, with the name of whoever took it. That changes everything: answering early lets you steal the rare answer others had in mind, and answering late means you already know what’s gone and have to find something else. On one phone you take turns, and the first player changes every question so that nobody is always last. In a room everyone answers at once, so speed counts too.

A sample round

Picture Sara, Luke and Anna in Blind mode, facing “Name a sea”, a question that has already been played many times.

• Luke types “medit” and picks the Mediterranean Sea. It’s the most given answer of all: Obvious band, 5 points, minus the 10-point penalty. The total can’t go below zero, so he gets 0.
• Sara picks the Ionian Sea, which plenty of people have given, but not too many: Average band, 45 points.
• Anna digs the Sulu Sea out of her old geography lessons. Nobody had ever chosen it: Super rare band, 100 points, plus the 30-point bonus. That makes 130.

At the reveal the answers appear in that order, Luke, Sara and Anna, and the quick leaderboard puts Anna in front. At the end of the match the three answers are added to everyone’s counts: the Sulu Sea has just become a little less rare for the next person who thinks of it.

How to play well

• Throw away your first answer. If it came to you straight away, it came to everyone straight away. The second one is often no better.
• Search your personal memories. A trip, a documentary, a subject you liked at school: that’s where the rare answers are, not in the list everybody learned.
• Don’t chase the perfect answer. Thirty seconds go quickly, and a common answer is still worth more than a pass.
• Go ahead and try. If what you type doesn’t appear, it isn’t a valid answer, but you lose nothing: delete it and try another while there’s time.
• In Live mode, keep two or three ready. If you have something rare in mind, give it straight away. If you wait, you may see it vanish with someone else’s name next to it.

On one phone or one each

On one phone the game has you hand it around: a screen says whose turn it is, and everyone else looks away. Whoever has just answered sees their own answer and points, then taps “Got it” and passes the phone, so nobody can copy. After the last player, the reveal starts for everyone.

In a room one person creates the room, the others join with a code or QR, and the host starts the match. Everyone answers at once, you see your own score after answering, and the reveal starts at the same moment on every phone. The host moves on to the next question and, if someone is distracted, can close the answers early. A lost connection doesn’t hold anyone up: when time runs out, the game carries on anyway.

One important difference: unlike the other games, Against the Grain needs the internet even on a single phone, because at the start it has to download the statistics for the chosen questions. After that, on one phone, the match makes no further requests until the end, when it sends the answers given. If there’s no network at that moment the match still counts: those answers just don’t make it into the totals.

Who it’s for

Against the Grain works from 2 to 20 players, and a six-question match takes just a few minutes. Quiz lovers enjoy it, and so do people who usually avoid quizzes: the person who knows the most doesn’t necessarily win, because lateral thinking often helps more than general knowledge, and an odd memory can beat years of study. Wrong answers don’t embarrass anyone, since they simply don’t appear.

It’s also a game that changes over time. The more people play, the more accurate the statistics become, and an answer that’s a surprise today may be commonplace a few months from now. There are no world rankings or prizes, though: the numbers are only there to entertain your table. If you’re after another game of words and quick thinking for the same group, try Name, Place, Thing; the rest are in the games catalogue.