OPERATION: NUTCRACKER — A PARTY GAME FOR 2–20 SQUIRRELS
Squirrels have infiltrated AI headquarters. Your friends are the squirrels. On their phones they answer prompts pretending to be an AI, and a real AI, the Intelligence Officer, judges who passed. Put the board on a TV or laptop, everyone joins on their phone, done.
You need one big screen everyone can see (a TV, projector or laptop), a phone each, and 2 to 20 squirrels. A game of 3 rounds takes about 20 minutes.
Host: start a room on this page, on the big screen. It shows a 4-letter room code.
Players: open /play on your phone, type the room code and pick an agent name.
Host: choose how many of each round, and how long to answer, then press Commence Operation.
Each round, a prompt appears on the big screen and every phone. Answer it the way an AI would, before the clock runs out.
The Intelligence Officer reads every answer, gives a verdict, CONVINCINGLY ARTIFICIAL or SQUIRREL IDENTIFIED, with a note on your tells, and picks the round’s best operative.
At the end, the top scorer is promoted to THE AI, and the Officer writes an honours board for everyone else.
🎲 THE ROUNDS
🤖 Sounds Like AI
A question anyone might ask an assistant. Win with em dashes, numbered lists, “Great question!” and relentless helpfulness. Lose with “lol” and opinions.
🔍 You Could Have Googled That
Trivia, answered the way an AI would. Being right helps. Being wrong with total confidence and a training-cutoff caveat can still win.
🎨 The Cave Wall
Finger-draw something impossible, like “a moonberry” or “a kraken frog”. The Officer looks at every drawing and rewards commitment to the absurd.
🎰 Prompt Roulette
The chaos round. Write a breakup letter to a toaster, a one-star review of the moon… Funny counts, but still sound like an AI.
🏅 SCORING
Round winner +3, runner-up +1, and each special award from the Officer +1 (“Best Em Dash”, “Most Confidently Wrong”…).
Still typing when the buzzer goes? Your answer is collected anyway, at −1: a real AI never runs out the clock.
A tie at the top means ⚡ The Playoff: one fiendish prompt for the tied agents only, judged with no mercy.
🎁 FREE GAME AND HOST CODES
Every household gets one free live game a day (up to 3 rounds and 8 squirrels).
A host code holds 10 live games. A game is used when you press Commence, and replaying with the same squirrels uses another.
Out of games? You can always play with the stand-in rubber-stamp judge for free. It’s clearly labelled, and much less clever.