Timer

How long a round should be

Most party games settle on one minute because it is long enough to get somewhere and short enough that a bad card does not ruin anybody's turn. Charades has run on a minute for decades. A quiz round wants less, around thirty seconds, because the thinking is done in the first ten seconds and the rest is just conferring. A classroom task wants more, usually five minutes, and works better when the class can see the number falling rather than being told when to stop. If you are running something new and cannot decide, start at one minute and watch whether people finish early or run out; a timer is easy to change between rounds, and you can add or take off time while it is still running.

Running a timer in a classroom

A visible countdown does the job of asking a class how they are getting on, without interrupting anybody. The classroom preset starts with the sound off for exactly that reason: a chime in a quiet room is startling, and a screen that turns red says the same thing without breaking the concentration of the group that is still working. Put the timer on the board in full screen and the number is legible from the back. The screen will not sleep while it is counting, so you can set it going and walk away from the desk.

Why it stays accurate

Browsers slow down or completely freeze a tab you are not looking at, which is why a lot of online timers drift, or come back minutes wrong after you check your email. This one records the moment the countdown should end and works out the remaining time from the clock every time it draws, so a tab that was frozen for four minutes is simply correct the moment you return to it rather than four minutes behind.

Presets and what they are for

• Charades. One minute a turn, the round length everybody already knows.
• Quiz round. Thirty seconds to confer and lock in an answer.
• Classroom. Five minutes for a task, and the sound starts off.
• Party game. Two minutes of noise, with a finish nobody can miss.
• 1 minute challenge. Sixty seconds, one go, no second attempt.
• 2 minute challenge. Long enough to think, short enough to hurry.
• 5 minute challenge. A proper stretch for a team task or a hunt.

Every preset has its own link, so you can send somebody straight to the one you mean. The printables that pair with them are free too: charades cards, bingo cards, scavenger hunt checklists and word searches. If you need to pick a person rather than time one, the spinning wheel does that, and the stopwatch counts up instead of down.