Red light, green light

A caller who cannot be read

Whoever calls this game gives themselves away. They take a breath before they say stop, they look at the fastest runner, they let the round go longer when their own child is behind. None of it is deliberate and all of it is readable by about the fourth round, which is when the game stops being a game.

A screen has no tells. Each state lasts a length drawn inside its own range, so a long go is followed by anything at all and the rhythm never settles into something a nine year old can count. It also frees the adult to watch the line, which is the job that actually needs doing.

Outside, at the far end of a field

This is built for a phone propped against a bag twenty metres away. The word fills the screen, the colour behind it is readable at a glance, full screen removes everything else, and the screen is held awake so it does not go dark halfway through a round. The whistle carries further than any of that, which is why there is one on every change.

For a physical education lesson, short go states and longer freezes make the game about control rather than speed: three seconds of running and six seconds of holding still is genuinely hard work, and it is the version that tires a class out fastest.

Never the colour on its own

Red and green are the two colours most often confused, and this is a game that lives on exactly those two. So the colour is never the signal: the word is the biggest thing on the screen, the state is named underneath it, the change is announced in words, and each one has its own sound. Four signals, of which the colour is the least important.

For a plain countdown rather than a switching signal, the countdown timer reads from just as far away, and for timing a run rather than interrupting one, the stopwatch has lap times built in.

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