A this or that question asks for a preference and nothing else. Coffee or tea. Window or aisle. No cost is attached to either side, nobody has to defend a choice, and the whole exchange takes about two seconds. That is not a weakness of the format. The speed is the reason it works in rooms where a slower question would sit there unanswered.
It is the light cousin of would you rather. That format hands you two things you do not want and asks which one you will live with. This one hands you two things you already like and asks which you reach for first. One of them fills an hour with arguing. This one fills the four minutes before a group is willing to argue about anything at all.
The pairs below are sorted by the room they suit. Openers for a table of strangers, food splits that never resolve, travel and weekend choices, a set built for a long drive, pairs for two people on a sofa, and a last group that sounds casual and is not. Take what fits and ignore the rest; no list survives contact with a real group intact.
Read them fast. Do not let anyone explain themselves during the first minute, because one thoughtful answer sets the pace for every answer after it and the round quietly turns into an interview. When a pair splits the room down the middle, stop there and ask why. That is the only moment worth slowing down for, and you will get two or three of them in a good round.
The list
66 questions, grouped by mood
Fast openers for any room
The first minute of a round, when nobody has spoken yet and the job is simply to get answers moving. None of these reveal anything, which is exactly why a quiet table will answer them.
- “Coffee first or shower first?
- “Window seat or aisle seat?
- “Text back instantly or three days later?
- “Front row or back row?
- “Early and waiting or late and running?
- “Handwritten note or long voice message?
- “Loud restaurant or quiet one with worse food?
- “Big birthday party or dinner for four?
- “Read every review or walk in blind?
- “Same order every time or something new?
- “Cash or card for small things?
Food and drink splits
Everyone arrives with a settled opinion here, and nobody expects those opinions to clash as loudly as they do. Good for a dinner table that has run out of things to say about work.
- “Salt or sugar when you are stressed?
- “Breakfast for dinner or dinner for breakfast?
- “Cook for eight or be cooked for?
- “Street food or the reservation?
- “Crunchy or creamy?
- “Sharing plates or your own dish untouched?
- “Ice in everything or ice in nothing?
- “The last slice or the last spoonful of dessert?
- “Strong coffee or a genuinely good tea?
- “Leftovers cold from the fridge or reheated properly?
- “Follow the recipe or guess your way through?
Travel and weekend choices
Preferences that people hold firmly and rarely get asked about. These work with friends who have travelled together, and they work even better with friends who are about to.
- “Mountains in winter or coast in summer?
- “One long trip or four short ones?
- “Plan every hour or plan nothing?
- “Hotel with a view or apartment with a kitchen?
- “Rain all Saturday or heat you cannot sleep in?
- “Back to a place you love or somewhere new?
- “Train across a country or fly over it?
- “Museum morning or market morning?
- “Camping with friends or a hotel on your own?
- “Sunrise hike or midnight swim?
- “Pack light and buy nothing or pack heavy and carry it?
Rounds built for the car
Nothing here needs a screen, a prop, or eye contact, which makes it the one format that survives a four-hour drive. Half of these are already arguments the car is having anyway.
- “Driver picks the music or passenger picks the music?
- “Straight through or stop at everything?
- “Podcast or playlist for the next two hours?
- “Motorway speed or the slow road with the views?
- “Air conditioning or windows down?
- “Petrol station coffee or wait for a real one?
- “Arrive at midnight or leave at five?
- “Navigate by the map or by whoever is loudest?
- “Sing badly or sit in silence?
- “Snacks in the car or a proper stop?
- “Get lost once or never leave the route?
Pairs for two people
Slower, and meant for a couple rather than a table. Several of these will stop being a game partway through and turn into an actual conversation about how you treat each other.
- “Told the truth now or comforted first?
- “Plan the weekend together or be surprised by it?
- “Night out or the sofa and nothing?
- “Say it out loud or write it down?
- “Same bedtime or your own schedule?
- “Talk it out tonight or sleep on it?
- “Loud affection in public or quiet affection at home?
- “Do the chores together or split them and finish faster?
- “Live near family or near friends?
- “Gifts you asked for or gifts you did not?
- “You or me — which of us apologises first?
Choices that reveal a person
These look like the others and behave differently. The answers come just as fast, then somebody wants to take theirs back, and the taking back is the part worth listening to.
- “Respected or liked?
- “Fix it yourself or ask for help early?
- “Regret trying or regret waiting?
- “Be the one who notices or the one who acts?
- “Know the ending or be surprised?
- “An interesting life or a calm one?
- “Very good at one thing or fine at ten?
- “Advice you asked for or advice you did not?
- “Change a habit or change a belief?
- “Praised in public or paid in private?
- “You or me — who says the hard thing first?
Speed by design
Why the format runs on pace rather than depth
Nothing in a this or that pair is expensive. Nobody is exposed by admitting they prefer the aisle seat, which is why a silent room will answer it when it will not answer anything else. The first few pairs are barely questions. They are a way of establishing that people in this room say things out loud, and that saying something out loud costs nothing here.
The rhythm is the fragile part. One person answering in a paragraph resets the speed for everybody after them, and within four pairs you are running a discussion group instead of a round. Read the next pair before the last answer has finished landing. It feels abrupt for about thirty seconds, then the room settles into the pace and the answers start arriving unedited.
Unedited is what you are after. Given ten seconds, most people work out which choice makes them sound like the person they would rather be. Given two, they say the true one and then look faintly surprised at themselves. The gap between the fast answer and the constructed one is the most useful thing this format produces, and it only shows up at speed.
Two seconds, not ten
Anything longer and people start editing. The answer that arrives before the reasoning does is the one worth hearing, and it disappears the moment a round slows down.
Low stakes on purpose
Nobody reveals anything by saying they prefer trains. That is how this format opens rooms a personal question would close, including tables of colleagues and complete strangers.
Repeats are useful
Ask the same pair again an hour later, or a year later. People change their answer more often than they expect, and noticing the change is a conversation on its own.
Running a round
Four ways to run a round that keeps moving
Round the table is the default. One person reads, everybody answers in order, and the reader moves on without commenting. It works with four people or fourteen. The only rule that matters is that the reader does not join in for the first few pairs, because a reader who answers first hands the group a template and the template is always slower than the format wants.
For a big room, make it physical. Left side of the room or right side, hands up or hands down, stand or stay seated. Twenty people cannot answer aloud in any reasonable time, but twenty people can move, and a visible split reads instantly. Classrooms and parties both take this version better than they take a polite round of spoken answers.
For two people, invert it. Read a pair, then guess what the other one will say before they answer. Being wrong is more interesting than being right here, and a wrong guess about something as small as ice in a drink usually turns into five minutes about how rarely either of you gets asked anything at all. Keep score if you like, though the guessing is better without one.
Whatever version you run, keep a ratio in mind. Roughly one pair in ten deserves a why, and the other nine deserve to move. Chasing every answer flattens the round into a slow interview that nobody signed up for. Chasing none of them means you collected a hundred preferences and learned nothing beyond the fact that your friend likes the aisle seat, which you could have guessed.
Answer at the same time
Count to three and have everyone say their side at once. It stops the first speaker shaping the rest, and the honest split is what makes a pair worth revisiting.
Mark the splits
When a pair divides the room evenly, note it and come back once the fast section is done. Even splits are where the actual disagreement lives.
Drop dead pairs fast
Some pairs land flat and everybody picks the same side. Abandon those inside five seconds. There is no cost to skipping and a real cost to explaining why it should have worked.
Writing pairs
How to build a pair that splits a room
Two things people like, not two things people dread. Would you rather runs on costs; this format runs on genuine preference, and a pair only works when both sides have real supporters in the room. Beach or mountains splits a table. Beach or being stuck in traffic does not, because there is nothing to be curious about in a choice everybody makes the same way.
Make both sides concrete enough to picture. Comfort or adventure is not a pair, it is two abstractions people quietly redefine until they all agree with each other. A hotel with a view or an apartment with a kitchen is the same question with edges on it, and edges are what produce a split. If you cannot picture both options in a second, neither can the room.
The best pairs are stolen from the room you are in. What everybody ordered, the argument about the thermostat, the two routes home that half the group swears by. Pairs built from something visible get better answers than anything on a list, because the disagreement is already in the room and you are only giving it a shape and a turn to speak.
Two goods, not two bads
If one option is obviously worse, you have written a poll rather than a pair. Check it on yourself first: no pause means no round.
Name a real thing
Trains beat travel. Ice beats temperature. A specific object gives people a picture to react to, and reactions to pictures come faster than opinions about categories.
Steal from the table
Look at what is in front of you and build two pairs from it. Locally made pairs land harder than anything printed, and the group can tell you wrote them just now.
Rooms and limits
Where the format fits, and where it does not
Anywhere with dead time and no props. Cars, queues, waiting rooms, the twenty minutes before food arrives, the first stretch of a party where three people know each other and nobody else does. The format needs nothing but a voice, works with four players or forty, and can be abandoned halfway through without anybody feeling that something was left unfinished or that the game was cut short.
It is unusually safe at work, for one reason: a preference discloses nothing. A colleague who says they prefer the window seat has not told you about their marriage, their money, or their politics, and has still spoken in a room where speaking was the hard part. Keep to food, travel, and everyday habits, and skip the last group entirely with people you manage.
With kids it works better than almost anything else, because the answers are instant and being loud is allowed. On a first date it fills the awkward opening without either person having to perform. With a partner it is best used as a way in rather than a way through; four pairs and then a real conversation is a better evening than forty pairs.
It does not fix anything. A round of quick choices cannot carry a subject two people have been avoiding, and speeding up is a good way to keep avoiding it. If something serious is sitting between you — a betrayal, a decision one of you is still angry about, a partner who will not engage at all — a card game is not the right tool, and dressing the subject up as a light question will not make it lighter.
Make it feel natural
Six ways to get more from one question
Set the pace first
Run the first ten pairs at a clip with no commentary at all. The tempo you establish in the opening minute is the tempo you get for the rest of the round, and it is very hard to speed a slow round back up.
Ban the word depends
Someone will try to answer both sides with conditions attached. Make them pick anyway. The forced choice is more revealing than the caveats, and the caveats can come after everybody has committed to a side.
One why per ten
Pick a single pair out of every ten and ask one person to explain. Any more and the round loses its shape; any less and you have collected a hundred preferences and no reasons.
Hand the list over
The reader gets bored before anyone else does, because they see each pair coming. Pass the reading around every few minutes and the energy resets without anybody having to announce a change.
Stop while it is good
Rounds sag long before people admit it. End on a pair that split the room rather than playing until the answers go flat, and the group will ask for it again next time.
Follow the odd one out
When nine people pick one side and one person picks the other, stop and spend a minute there. The minority answer almost always has the most specific story sitting behind it, and the person holding it rarely volunteers that story unprompted.
Use Deep Conversations
Turn this guide into a game
- 1
Open Would You Rather and pick a light theme. The cards run two options the same way, with a little more weight on each side.
- 2
For the fastest version, play Blitz instead — sixty seconds, sixteen categories, and no time to explain a single answer.
- 3
When a pair starts an argument worth having, switch to Conversation Cards and add Food & Drinks, Travel, or Random Fun.
- 4
Everything runs free in the browser with no signup, so one phone passed around a car or a table is enough for the whole group.
Questions, answered
FAQ
What are good this or that questions?
Pairs where both sides have real supporters in the room. Coffee or tea, window or aisle, plan everything or plan nothing. If one option is obviously better, everybody picks it and there is nothing to talk about. Keep them to a few words, make both options concrete enough to picture, and read them fast enough that people answer before they edit.
What is the difference between this or that and would you rather?
This or that is a speed format built on preference — two things you like, answered in a word, with no defending required. Would you rather attaches a cost to both sides and expects you to argue for the one you chose. One of them warms a group up in four minutes; the other keeps it talking for an hour.
Learn moreHow do you play this or that?
One person reads a pair, everybody answers in turn, and the reader moves straight on. No scoring, no defending, no correct side. In a big room, replace spoken answers with hands or with people moving to one side. Roughly one pair in ten deserves a follow-up question, and the other nine deserve to keep moving.
Are this or that questions good icebreakers?
They are among the best, because a preference discloses nothing personal. Saying you prefer the aisle seat tells a room you are willing to speak without telling it anything about your life, which is the entire job of an opener. Stay on food, travel, and daily habits with people you have just met.
Learn moreWhat are funny this or that questions?
The ones built from small domestic arguments rather than absurd scenarios. Ice in everything or ice in nothing. Sing badly or sit in silence. The comedy comes from how strongly people defend something that does not matter, so pick subjects where everyone already has an opinion and nobody has ever been asked for it.
Learn moreWhat are good this or that questions for friends?
Travel and weekend pairs do well with people who have shared a trip, and the food ones are reliable at any table. Once the group has warmed up, the character pairs are worth trying — respected or liked, regret trying or regret waiting — because friends will actually argue about them instead of answering politely.
Learn moreWhat are good this or that questions for kids?
Anything they can answer without thinking and shout if they want to. Sweet or salty, swimming or climbing, beach or forest, pancakes or toast. Kids take the physical version best: one side of the room for each option, then everyone runs. Skip anything that compares people, and stop the round while they still want more.
How many this or that questions should I ask?
Fewer than you think. Twenty fast pairs is a full round for most groups, and the good part usually happens around number twelve when one pair splits the room and somebody wants to explain. End there rather than working through a list. A round that finishes early gets requested again; a round that runs long does not.
Learn more