Truth or Dare Questions

The warm-up round: easy to answer and easy to laugh at.

1. What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve done to avoid a small awkward conversation?
2. If your life had a theme tune that played whenever you walked in, what would it be?
3. Have you ever waved back at someone who wasn’t waving at you?
4. Which of your habits would surprise this room the most?
5. Describe the worst haircut you ever chose for yourself.
6. What’s the most embarrassing song on your playlist right now?
7. Do you talk to your pets, plants or car? What do you say?
8. Which animal do you think you could out-argue?
9. What’s the longest you’ve worn something inside out before anyone told you?
10. Tell us about your most dramatic reaction to a tiny inconvenience.
11. What’s the strangest thing you believed for years before finding out it wasn’t true?
12. If you had to give a ten-minute talk with no notes, what would it be about?
13. Which of your own dance moves deserves a name, and what would you call it?
14. What rule do you follow that nobody else seems to?
15. What’s a skill you’re quietly convinced you’d be brilliant at?

Questions about the people in the circle, all of them kind.

1. What’s the best thing someone in this room has done for you?
2. Which person here would you trust to plan a surprise for you?
3. Who would you call first with good news?
4. If this group opened a shop together, what would it sell and who would run it?
5. Describe the funniest moment you remember with anyone here.
6. What’s something you’ve learned from a friend in this room?
7. Which person here would you most want on your team on a desert island, and why?
8. Whose laugh do you like best in this room?
9. What nickname have you given a friend, or been given?
10. If the group entered a quiz night together, what would each person be best at?
11. Who here would win a staring contest?
12. Tell us about a small thing a friend did that you still remember.
13. Where would you most like to travel with this group?
14. What do you think each person here would be brilliant at teaching?
15. Have you ever had a friend guess exactly what you were about to say?

Small-you stories: toys, games and things you believed at seven.

1. What was your favourite toy, and where do you think it is now?
2. What did you want to be when you were seven?
3. Where was the best place you ever hid during hide-and-seek?
4. Which show did you watch on repeat as a kid?
5. Did you have an imaginary friend or a soft toy with a name?
6. Describe your favourite playground game. Did you play fair?
7. What’s the first thing you remember being proud of?
8. Which rule at your house seemed ridiculous back then?
9. Tell us about the best birthday party you went to as a child.
10. Name something you collected when you were small.
11. Which smell or sound takes you straight back to being little?
12. What did you believe about grown-ups that turned out to be wrong?
13. Tell us about your first pet, or the pet you always wanted.
14. What’s a harmless thing you once got told off for?
15. Which childhood game would you happily play again right now?

Safe for the office night as well as the family table.

1. Which school subject did you secretly enjoy?
2. What was your first job, and what did it teach you?
3. What’s the most awkward thing you’ve ever done on a video call?
4. Tell us about a teacher or mentor who made a difference to you.
5. If you could swap jobs with someone in this room for a week, whose would you pick?
6. What’s a school moment that still makes you cringe a little?
7. What’s the worst piece of career advice you’ve been given?
8. Have you ever sent a message to the wrong person, and how did you recover?
9. If you could try any job for a week, which would you pick?
10. Describe your most useless talent from school or the office.
11. Which meeting habit drives you up the wall?
12. How did you spend your best-ever lunch break?
13. What would you put on the job description for your dream role?
14. Which skill would you teach everyone at work if you could?
15. What’s the funniest excuse you’ve ever heard for a missing piece of homework?

No confession needed. Just make something up and commit to it.

1. If you could live in any fictional world for a month, which would you choose?
2. What would you name a boat you owned?
3. Which animal would be the rudest if animals could talk?
4. Imagine you wake up with a superpower that only works on Tuesdays. What is it?
5. If you could bring one extinct animal back as a pet, which would it be?
6. What would the star attraction at your own theme park be?
7. Which everyday object would have the most dramatic personality, and how would it behave?
8. If a personal robot did one job for you today, what would it be?
9. Where would you explore if you shrank to the size of a thumb for an afternoon?
10. Picture a statue of you in the town square. What are you doing in it?
11. What would a brand-new colour look like, and what would you call it?
12. Which tiny daily annoyance would you invent something to fix?
13. If you could ask your pet, or a pet you know, one question, what would it be?
14. What would your dream treehouse have inside?
15. Which boring place would you turn into somewhere magical?

For when the group is comfortable. Nothing here needs a secret.

1. What are you looking forward to this month?
2. Which compliment do you still think about?
3. When did you last feel proud of yourself?
4. What’s something small that reliably makes your day better?
5. Who taught you something you use every day?
6. Name a skill you’d like to have by this time next year.
7. What’s the best piece of advice anyone has given you?
8. Where do you go when you need to feel calm?
9. Which habit are you trying to build right now?
10. What do you wish more people asked you about?
11. Which age has been your favourite so far, and why?
12. What’s the kindest thing anyone has done for you?
13. What have you changed your mind about in the last few years?
14. Describe a perfectly ordinary Saturday you’d love to have.
15. What are you grateful for today?

Clean and warm, and fine to answer with the family in the next room.

1. What’s your favourite memory of the two of us?
2. Which small thing do I do that makes you smile?
3. What did you first notice about me?
4. Where would you take us for a surprise weekend away?
5. Which song reminds you of us?
6. Describe a tradition you’d like us to start.
7. What’s the most thoughtful thing I’ve done for you?
8. Is there something we haven’t done together that you’d love to try?
9. When did you first feel completely at ease with me?
10. What do you love about the way we spend a lazy Sunday?
11. Which quirk of mine would you never want to change?
12. What would our ideal evening at home look like?
13. Do you have a favourite joke that only the two of us understand?
14. What’s a compliment about me that you haven’t said out loud yet?
15. How would you describe the way we make plans together?

All performance, no props. Commit to the voice.

1. Describe what the group is doing right now as a nature documentary narrator, for twenty seconds.
2. Speak only in questions for the next thirty seconds.
3. Talk like a robot that is running out of battery for thirty seconds.
4. Deliver tomorrow’s weather forecast as if you’re gently breaking terrible news.
5. Act out a slow-motion victory celebration without leaving your seat.
6. Ask an imaginary butler to fetch you a cushion, in your poshest voice.
7. Say “good morning” in five different voices: a giant, a mouse, a pirate, a queen and an opera singer.
8. Read a sentence from the nearest book as if it were the most shocking news of the day.
9. Sing your name to the tune of a song everyone knows.
10. Give a thirty-second wedding speech for two objects in the room.
11. Announce a made-up prize to the group like an overexcited game-show host.
12. Show us around this room as a tour guide would show visitors around a castle.
13. Whisper everything you say like a spy for the next thirty seconds.
14. Tell us how your day started as if it were a tragic opera.
15. Commentate on the room for twenty seconds as if it were a snooker final, hushed and tense.

Nothing to fetch, nothing to break, nowhere to go.

1. Say the alphabet backwards from Z as far as you can before the group counts to ten.
2. Talk for thirty seconds about a spoon without using the word “the”.
3. Count backwards from thirty in threes without stopping.
4. Name ten animals in fifteen seconds.
5. Do your best impression of a cat waking up from a nap.
6. Tell us about your morning in exactly ten words.
7. Mime getting dressed for a snowstorm, one layer at a time, without leaving your seat.
8. Stay deadpan for twenty seconds while the group takes turns telling one-line jokes.
9. Pat your head and rub your tummy while counting backwards from ten.
10. Stare at one spot on the wall and describe its life story in twenty seconds.
11. Say “red lorry, yellow lorry” five times fast without a slip.
12. Hum a song for twenty seconds and see whether anyone guesses it.
13. Invent a grand title for yourself and announce it as if you’ve just arrived at a royal ball.
14. Make the face you’d pull if you’d just remembered leaving the oven on.
15. Say everyone’s first name in the room backwards, as fast as you can.

Your own phone only. Nothing gets sent, posted or shown to anyone outside the circle.

1. Take a selfie with your most dramatic film-poster face and show it to the group.
2. Record a fifteen-second voice memo selling a very ordinary object as a life-changing invention, then play it back.
3. Set a twenty-second timer and tell a story that has to finish before it rings.
4. Ask your phone’s voice typing to write down a tongue twister and read out whatever it managed.
5. Search for a photo of a sloth and give it a full biography.
6. Complete “Today I feel…” using only your phone’s predictive text and read the result aloud.
7. Play the chorus of a song you know every word to and lip-sync it dramatically.
8. Take three photos of the most boring object in the room and rate each one out of ten like an art critic.
9. Pick an emoji from your keyboard without showing anyone, then act it out until the group guesses it.
10. Write a three-line poem about the ceiling in your notes app, then read it out.
11. Start your stopwatch and try to stop it on exactly ten seconds without looking.
12. Film ten seconds of yourself delivering a very serious weather report and play it back.
13. Use your camera to zoom in on one thing in the room and describe it as if it were a distant planet.
14. Set a timer for thirty seconds and list as many things you can see as possible before it ends.
15. Play your phone’s alarm sound and act out the most dramatic morning in history until it stops.

The dared player leads and everyone joins in from their seat. No touching.

1. Lead the whole group in a fifteen-second dance that everyone copies from their seats.
2. Get the group to count to twenty, one voice at a time, in any order, restarting whenever two people speak together.
3. Teach the group a made-up cheer and lead it once.
4. Start humming a song and get the whole group to join in within fifteen seconds without saying what it is.
5. Lead the group in making the sound of a rainstorm using only voices and clapping.
6. Get everyone to give you one word, then tell a story that uses all of them in forty-five seconds.
7. Conduct the group as a humming orchestra, and cut them off with one wave of your hand.
8. Start a rhyme chain around the group. Whoever stalls first chooses the next dare.
9. Direct a forty-five-second play in which everyone has exactly one line.
10. Lead the group in freezing into a still-life pose, as if a photographer just said “hold it”.
11. Play one round of “do as I do” from your seat, with the whole group following.
12. Hum three songs and let the group guess each one.
13. Get the group to agree on a name for a made-up animal, then describe it together, one word at a time.
14. Run a quick three-question quiz for the group on your favourite subject and announce the winner.
15. Start a memory chain, “I’m going on holiday and I’m packing…”, and keep it going for thirty seconds or until someone forgets an item.

For the players who would rather make something than embarrass themselves.

1. Draw an imaginary pet in the air with your finger and let the group guess what it is.
2. Make up a four-line song about your morning and sing it.
3. Invent a new dance called the Monday Shuffle and teach it to the group in twenty seconds.
4. Invent a new holiday and describe how everyone celebrates it.
5. Write a six-word story about your week and read it like an award-winning novel.
6. Create a slogan for the room you’re sitting in.
7. Rap three lines about the nearest lamp.
8. Invent a sport that can be played from a sofa and explain the scoring.
9. Sing a made-up lullaby to the nearest cushion.
10. Act out a film title without speaking and let the group guess.
11. Invent a superhero whose only power is very small, and give them a catchphrase.
12. Name a made-up band, its first hit and how the chorus goes.
13. Give a thirty-second talk on why ducks deserve a day off.
14. Create a new word, define it, and use it in three sentences.
15. Compose a ten-second jingle for imaginary shoes that only walk backwards.

Low energy and low volume. Good for late evenings, small tables and shy groups.

1. Pay a quiet, sincere compliment to someone of your choice.
2. Describe your favourite room in a whisper so calm that everyone leans in.
3. Lead the group in three slow breaths, counting aloud.
4. Name three things in this room you’re grateful for, and say why.
5. Read a sentence from the nearest book in your gentlest bedtime-story voice.
6. Tell the group about the best cloud you’ve ever seen.
7. Describe your dream cottage, one room at a time, in thirty seconds.
8. Stay perfectly still for fifteen seconds like a statue while someone else counts down.
9. Offer the group one quiet piece of advice for the week ahead.
10. Tell us your favourite word and why you like the sound of it.
11. Hum a lullaby and see whether the group can guess it.
12. Describe a sound you love in three sentences.
13. Say thank you to something that helped you today, like a chair or a kettle.
14. Teach the group one small life hack in under a minute.
15. Recite the months of the year in a slow, dramatic whisper.

They need a face, a voice and whatever is within arm’s reach.

1. Hold up an object within reach that isn’t food and sell it to us in twenty seconds.
2. Mute yourself and act out your morning routine while the call guesses each step.
3. Leave the frame and come back as a completely different character.
4. Freeze mid-sentence and see how long the call takes to decide whether you’ve glitched.
5. Show only your eyebrows to the camera and act out three emotions for the call to guess.
6. Tell a story about a journey using only hand gestures and no sound.
7. Stand up and give the call a slow-motion wave that lasts ten seconds.
8. Balance a sheet of paper on your head and keep talking for fifteen seconds.
9. Introduce an object within reach as the guest of honour on a chat show.
10. Whisper a completely made-up secret to your camera for fifteen seconds.
11. Interview yourself on screen as a chat-show host, asking and answering three questions.
12. Wave both arms above your head as if signalling a ship far out at sea.
13. Tell your best joke using only three words per sentence.
14. Teach the call a three-move dance using only your head and shoulders.
15. Use your two hands as characters in a ten-second argument.