The best moment in games like Pointless is always the same. Someone reaches past the obvious answers, names the one nobody else thought of, and the room goes up. It isn't about knowing the most. It's about thinking of the thing everyone else missed.
Concentration is a party game built entirely around that moment. Everyone answers the same prompt in secret, and the rarer your answer, the more you score. The difference from the TV show is who you're up against. On Pointless, your answer is measured against a survey of strangers. In Concentration, it's measured against the people sitting next to you.
How Concentration is scored
Every group of matching answers shares 1000 points between its members. That one rule does all the work.
| How many wrote your answer | Points each |
|---|---|
| Just you | 1000 |
| Two of you | 500 |
| Three of you | 333 |
| Four of you | 250 |
| Five of you | 200 |
So a unique answer takes the lot, and the answer half the room wrote is worth almost nothing. Nobody is ever on zero for having a go, but the obvious answer quietly punishes itself.
How to play
Concentration is a host-led game for 3 to 20 players, or 2 to 5 teams.
- Open the game on a screen everyone can see. A TV, a projector, or a shared screen on a video call. Players join from their phones with a QR code or link, with no app and no sign-up.
- Pick your prompt. Use a set from the Playground, let AI draft prompts around a topic, or type one live. With a set, each prompt waits on your screen until you share it, and you can skip any that don't feel right.
- Everyone answers in secret. Your screen shows a counter, not the answers, so nobody can wait, read what's popular and dodge it.
- Reveal the answers. They appear together as a word cloud with no names attached. Popular answers grow bigger, so the rare ones are visibly the smallest words on screen.
- Tidy up, then score. If "Coca-Cola" and "Coke" are clearly the same answer, merge them. If someone wrote nonsense just to be unique, you can remove it. Then tap to score and the points land.
Play as many rounds as you like, with the leaderboard between each one.
The strategy nobody expects
Concentration looks simple until the second round, when the room realises it's a mind game. The obvious answer is a trap, because everyone else knows it's obvious. So people swerve to the second most obvious answer, and suddenly that's the crowded one.
Take "a fruit". Round one, six people write apple and share 1000 points between them, about 167 each. The person who wrote lychee takes 1000 on their own. Round two, nobody writes apple, three people write banana, and the one brave soul who went back to apple wins the round.
That back and forth is where the laughing starts, and why it works so well straight after a round of Telepathy, where matching the crowd is the whole point. Same prompts, opposite instincts. There's more on that game in our guide to games like Herd Mentality.
How it compares with Pointless and Scattergories
Concentration isn't a version of either, but it shares their best idea.
- Pointless rewards the answer that the fewest people in a survey gave. Concentration does the same with the people in the room, so the "survey" is your friends, your team or your family, and the answers are about them.
- Scattergories cancels out answers two players share. Concentration doesn't wipe them out, it shares the points, so a clash costs you rather than zeroing you.
- Neither needs a pencil. Answers come in on phones, get grouped for you, and scores add themselves up.
25 prompts that work for unique answers
Good Concentration prompts have lots of valid answers and a few very obvious ones. Copy these into a Playground set or type them live.
- Something in your pocket right now
- A fruit
- A country in Africa
- A superhero
- A word that starts with Z
- A breakfast cereal
- A body part with three letters
- A capital city in Europe
- A type of cheese
- A pasta shape
- A famous duo
- An animal that lives in the sea
- A car brand
- A board game
- A sport played with a ball
- A shade of blue
- A Disney film
- A spice or herb
- A word that means happy
- Something you'd find in a handbag
- A job with "manager" in the title
- A reason to be late for work
- A song everyone sings at karaoke
- Something you'd take to a desert island
- A Christmas song
For a team event, add a few about your workplace: "a word our CEO says a lot", "a tool we use every day", "a place we've had a team lunch". For a family night, try "a relative's catchphrase" or "a dish from Sunday lunch".
Where Concentration shines
Team building. Everyone answers privately, so the quietest person in the team has the same shot as the loudest. It rewards thinking differently, which is a nice thing to celebrate in a team.
Quiz nights. Run it as an interval round. There are no facts to revise, so tables that are nowhere on general knowledge get a real chance to climb. Our guide to hosting a quiz night has more ways to mix rounds.
Classrooms and clubs. Vocabulary prompts like "a word that means big" turn into a race to find the rarest synonym.
Big groups. Past 20 people, switch on teams. Each team agrees on one answer, and the debate inside each team about what the others will write is half the fun.
Rooms with no phones out. In a One-host session, the host runs Concentration from a single device and players type their answers in turn.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a game like Pointless you can play at home?
Yes. Concentration on Neegma is built around the same pleasure of the rare answer, but it's scored against the people in your room rather than a survey. Players join from their phones and the host's screen shows the answers.
How is Concentration scored?
Every group of matching answers shares 1000 points. A unique answer scores 1000, two matching answers score 500 each, and five matching answers score 200 each.
What's the difference between Concentration and Telepathy?
They're opposites. In Telepathy, you score by matching the most popular answer. In Concentration, you score by giving an answer few or no other players gave.
How many people can play?
3 to 20 individual players, or 2 to 5 teams for a bigger group.
What stops someone writing nonsense to get a unique answer?
The host. Before scoring, the host can remove any answer that doesn't fit the prompt and merge answers that mean the same thing.
Is it free?
Up to 10 players is free on the Free plan. For bigger events, a Party Pass starts at £7.99 for 24 hours of play.
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