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Hot potato
The screen knows who holds the potato. Pass with a tap, and when time runs out the holder is out.
Add players
starts with it
Players
No players yet. Type a name and press Add.
The potato starts with the first name and passes down the list, skipping anybody out.
Names stay in this browser. They are never put in a link, and every tool with players reads the same list.
Shortest round, in seconds
Longest round, in seconds
Between 1 and 300 seconds. The real length is drawn inside the range each round and is never shown, so nobody can hold on until the last moment.
Which way it goes
When the time is up
The potato goes round the list, and whoever holds it at the end is out.
A pass always skips anybody already out, so the circle closes up as the game goes on rather than leaving gaps.
Sound
A knock on every pass and a whistle when the round ends. Both are announced in words as well, so a quiet room still knows.
Space start the round, then pass it on
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The playground game, with the referee built in
Hot potato has one weakness at a real party, and it is not the potato. It is that somebody has to run the music, and that somebody is watching the circle rather than playing, and everybody suspects they stopped it on purpose. A hidden timer removes the accusation entirely: nobody chose the moment, including the person holding the phone.
Putting the holder on the screen fixes the other half. In a circle of eight there is always a moment where two people both think they have it and one of them is wrong, and the argument takes longer than the round did. Here the screen says the name in type you can read from across a room, and the round carries on.
Kindness rules for knocking people out
Elimination games have a well-known problem: the first person out is often the youngest or the slowest, and they then sit and watch for fifteen minutes. There are two easy fixes and both are here. Turn the knockout off entirely and the game becomes a series of rounds where the potato just names somebody, which is enough of a game for most young children.
Or keep it on and shorten the range, so a round lasts five to fifteen seconds and the whole game is over in three minutes. A short elimination game is a very different experience from a long one, and the person out first is back in almost immediately.
The log nobody expects
Every hold is timed and listed, and it turns out to be the most-read part of the page. People have a style: one person passes in two tenths of a second every single time, another holds it until they are sure, and both of them are surprised to see it written down. It is also the honest record of a round somebody wants to re-argue.
For a fuse you watch rather than a circle you track, the timer bomb is the page next door, and for a plain countdown everybody can see, the countdown timer is the one to open. Names come from the same shared list every tool here with players uses.
Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for
The tool runs entirely in your browser. There is no account, nothing you make is uploaded, and nothing you type is sent anywhere or put into a link.
The page itself is not silent, though: it carries advertising code and a visit counter that sets no cookie, and the cookie page says exactly what each of those does.
This page remembers your settings in your browser under pph.potato.range, pph.potato.rules and pph.potato.muted, and nowhere else. Clearing your site data for papercarnival.com removes it.
Player names are kept under pph.players so every tool with players reads the same list. They stay in this browser and never reach a link.
Questions
- How is this different from the timer bomb?
- The bomb is one hidden countdown with a fuse to watch. This tracks whose turn it is properly: it skips anybody already out, logs how long each person held it, and runs rounds until one player is left. Use the bomb for a single dramatic moment and this when it is a whole game.
- Can we pass the other way?
- Yes. The Rules tab turns the direction round, which is the classic playground trick for making the person to your left worry. It applies to every pass from that moment on, so it can be flipped mid-game when the table decides it should be.
- Does somebody have to go out?
- By default yes, and the last one still in wins. You can turn it off, and then the potato simply names whoever was holding it and everybody carries on, which is the version that works with young children and with a class.
- What does the log show?
- How long each hold lasted, in tenths of a second, newest first. It is the part people find funniest afterwards: somebody always turns out to have held it for two tenths of a second every round, and somebody else kept it for eight.
- Does the phone stay awake?
- Yes, while a round is running. Nothing about a running round is saved though, so closing the tab ends the round rather than pausing it, and opening the page again is a fresh start.
More from Timers and timed games
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OpenEverything in Timers and timed games, and every family on the tools page.