Hot or Not

How to play

1. 1Read the card. Both call it at the same time.
2. 2Matches pass. Splits get thirty seconds of explanation each.
3. 3No changing your answer once you have heard theirs.
4. 4Note anything your partner marked hot that you have never done.
5. 5That note is the entire value of the game.

Why couples love this game

The splits are quietly actionable. Finding out your partner thinks a voice note is far better than a text, or that being picked up without asking is the single most attractive thing on the list, is a small piece of information that changes an ordinary week.

This is deliberately not a game about rating people. It is a game about rating everything else: gestures, traits, situations, and the specific small things that either work on somebody or completely do not.

Both of you call each one at the same time. The matches are pleasant; the splits are the useful part, because they are usually things one of you has been doing for years under the impression it was landing.

It stays flirty rather than explicit, and it works just as well early on as it does after twenty years.

Example questions

• A kiss that starts on the mouth and ends on the neck.
• Being told, out loud, that you are wanted.
• The look they give you when they want you and everyone else is still talking.
• A hand on the small of your back that does not move.
• Being interrupted mid-sentence with a kiss.
• Hotel hallway. Key card. Nobody talking yet.

The full game has 40 of these, shuffled every time you play.

Who this game is best for

• —New couples working out what lands
• —Long-term couples on autopilot
• —Video calls
• —Ten minutes before going out

Tips to make it better

• ✦Call it simultaneously. Otherwise the second person is just agreeing.
• ✦Write down what they marked hot that you never do. That is the point.
• ✦Do not defend a "not". Nobody chooses what works on them.
• ✦It stays flirty — nothing here is explicit.

Frequently asked questions