How to Play Spectrum: the Psychic, One Clue and the Dial

Where does "a wet swimsuit on an air-conditioned bus" sit on the hot–cold scale? If your table would give three different answers, you're in the right game. Spectrum is an intuition game about being on the same wavelength: one player describes a secret point with a single clue, everyone else turns a dial, and the table finds out — painfully — how good that clue really was.

Setup: scan the QR, type a name

One person creates a table on the home page; everyone else scans the QR code and types a name. No app, no sign-up. Spectrum plays with 3 to 12 people; in short mode everyone is the psychic once, in long mode twice.

How a round works

1. Each round one player becomes the psychic. Their screen shows two opposite ends (say, hot–cold) and a secret target between 0 and 100 that only they can see.
2. The psychic gives ONE clue that captures the target — out loud, at the table. Nothing is typed; this is a table game, eyes will meet.
3. Everyone else sets the dial on their own phone and locks in a guess within 45 seconds. A locked guess is final.
4. Once all dials are locked, the reveal hits: target, guesses and points appear at the same moment. When the rounds run out, the highest total wins.

Scoring

Your distance from the target decides your points:

• Within 5: 4 points
• Within 10: 3 points
• Within 20: 2 points
• Within 30: 1 point
• Further out: 0 — better luck next round. 😅

The psychic earns +1 for every guesser who scored. So the psychic's incentive is a clue clear enough to feed the whole table; an artistic clue nobody decodes leaves the psychic at zero too.

The craft of the clue

• Skip the cheap middle. If the target sits near 50, "lukewarm tea" is easy; real skill is a clue that says 85 without making anyone dial 100.
• Speak the table's shared language. A show everyone watches, the café you're sitting in, an inside joke — shared culture beats general knowledge here.
• One concept, one vivid image. Clues that start with "it's kind of, you know…" scatter the dials to the four winds.
• As a guesser, read the psychic, not just the clue. The same clue means different things from different people; asking "where would THEY put this?" regularly turns 2 points into 4.

Same wavelength?

Open a Spectrum table and find out. When the game ends, party mode rolls the same room straight into the next game — points stack all night and the table crowns its champion. 📻