Two Truths and a Lie, a private game for two
Each of you writes three short facts about yourself and marks one as the lie. It’s just the two of you, no audience: your statements go to the other person, and the answer is revealed once you’ve both made your guess.
- Time: About 10 minutes
- Format: Two devices
- Sign-up: No email
Example
Travel
- I once slept through my stop and rode the train three hours past it.
- I've been to a country whose name I still can't spell correctly.the lie
- I buy a magnet on every trip and have never put a single one on the fridge.
The rules in a minute
Create a room and send the link
No email is needed for your first game. The other person opens the link on their own device and you let them in.
Write three statements about yourself
Each can be up to 160 characters. Two must be true and one made up. Mark which of the three is false; the other person won’t see that mark.
Read the other person’s three statements
They write their set the same way you do. Pick the statement you believe is the lie.
See the reveal
Once you’ve both guessed, the game reveals the answers: where each lie was and who found it.
Ask about the truths
The best part starts after the reveal: two real facts usually call for details. That’s what the room chat is for. Want more? Another round starts a fresh exchange.
Four sample sets
Try to spot the lie before you read the answer under each set. The examples were made up for this page; in the game you write about yourself.
Everyday skills
1. I can juggle three tangerines. 2. I can fold a T-shirt in three seconds with a single move. 3. I can peel a potato in one long ribbon without breaking it.
The lie is number two. The set works because all three are the same size, and each one makes you want to say “Go on, show me.”
Childhood
1. In first grade I had my own newspaper with a print run of one copy. 2. In the school play I was cast as a tree and had no lines. 3. As a kid I was banned from singing at home because the neighbors’ dog would start howling.
The lie is number one: there was no newspaper, there was a handwritten magazine about dinosaurs. A good trick is to take a real story and change one detail.
Tastes
1. I eat lemons in wedges, like an orange, without flinching. 2. I only drink coffee once it has gone cold. 3. I fall asleep during any movie longer than two hours.
The lie is number two. Nothing here is spectacular, which is exactly why it’s hard: everyone has odd habits, and there’s no telling which.
Small wins and failures
1. I have a certificate for third place in a table tennis tournament. 2. It took me three tries to pass my driving test. 3. My one and only cooking contest ended with the smoke alarm going off.
The lie is number one. Two confessions of failure next to one modest win: you’d expect one of the flops to be invented, but it’s the certificate.
What to write when nothing comes to mind
Start with the truths, not the lie. Think of two facts that will make the other person ask “Wait, what?”: an unexpected skill, a ridiculous incident, an odd habit, a first job, a childhood obsession, a small personal record. Then invent a lie of the same size, no flashier and no duller than the truths.
Topics that nearly always help: food and kitchen disasters; pets; school and childhood fears; things that went wrong on the road; what you can do with your hands; something you’ve never done even though everyone else has.
If you’ve been together a long time, look in the years before you met, or in small things that never came up. If you met recently, keep it light: skip anything heavy, too personal or about other people, and leave out your address, phone number and workplace.
Three ways to make a lie convincing. Take a real story and change one detail. Describe something you nearly did and backed out of at the last moment. Or write something you’d quite like to be true. And don’t overload it: one statement, one fact, and 160 characters will be plenty.
How playing one-on-one differs from playing in a group
In a group this game is a warm-up: everyone talks out loud, there’s no time to think, and your face gives the lie away. One-on-one in writing it’s different: you have time to choose your words, nobody sees your face, and the text is all there is.
So it’s the attentive, not the actors, who win here: you look for the lie in how a sentence is written. Too smooth, too detailed or suspiciously short are all clues. You can write and guess at different times: the game waits for the other half of the exchange for up to seven days.
Questions about the game
- Can the other person see which statement I marked as the lie?
- Not before the reveal. They see three statements and choose for themselves. The answer opens once you’ve both made your guess.
- What if I write my statements today and the other person writes theirs a couple of days later?
- That works. The game waits for up to seven days: your set stays put, and the reveal happens once you’ve both guessed.
- My fact doesn’t fit into 160 characters. What now?
- Keep the core: one sentence, one fact. Save the details for after the reveal and tell them in the room chat when the other person asks how on earth that happened.
- Can we play several times in a row?
- Yes. One game is one full exchange of three statements each. Another round starts a new exchange with new statements.
- We speak different languages. Can we still play?
- The interface comes in English and Russian, and each of you can play in your own language. But you write the statements yourselves, so the other person will read them in whatever language you wrote them in.
Where to go next
- Guess My Answer: a question game for couplesDon’t feel like making anything up? In Guess My Answer you only choose from ready-made options.
- Texting games that don’t need you both onlineMore games for texting, for when the chat has stalled.
- Icebreaker questions that don’t feel like a formMet recently and not sure what’s okay to ask? A set of light questions and topics to start with.
- Three games for two: compare and chooseAll three games compared by time and format, if you’re still deciding.