The free who am I guessing game Who Am I?

How to play Who Am I?

You need one phone and at least one other person. One player guesses and asks the questions. Everyone else knows the answer and can only say yes or no. It works for 2 to 20 players, solo or in teams.

1. 1Pick a deck: Characters, Animals, Jobs, Things, Famous places, Foods or Kids.
2. 2Choose a round length of 1, 2 or 3 minutes, then play Solo or with 2 to 4 teams.
3. 3The guesser holds the phone sideways against their forehead, screen facing out, so everyone else can read it.
4. 4The guesser asks only yes-or-no questions, like “Am I a person?” or “Am I bigger than a car?” Everyone else answers yes or no.
5. 5Got it? Tilt the phone down, or tap the bottom half of the screen. Want to skip? Tilt it up or tap the top half to pass.
6. 6When time runs out, hand the phone to the next guesser or the next team.

A sample round: the card says “octopus.” “Am I a person?” No. “Am I an animal?” Yes. “Do I have fur?” No. “Do I live in water?” Yes. “Do I have a lot of arms?” Everyone nods. “Octopus.” Tilt down, next card.

Who Am I? decks

Pick a deck before you start: Characters, Animals, Jobs, Things, Famous places, Foods or Kids. Every character is fictional, so nobody needs to keep up with celebrity news, and every card is family-friendly.

Controls, rounds and teams

The controls work just like our Forehead Guess game. Tilt the phone down for got it and up to pass, or switch to Tap: the bottom half of the screen is got it, the top half is pass. On an iPhone, the first time you choose Tilt, your phone asks for motion permission. Allow it once. If you tapped no by mistake, switch to Tap and keep playing.

On a laptop, press the down arrow for got it and the up arrow to pass. That's handy in a classroom, where the guesser can stand with their back to a big screen.

Rounds last 1, 2 or 3 minutes. One minute is a sprint. Three minutes gives you room to reason through a harder card. Want a classic challenge? Try the house rule of 20 questions at most per card. Count out loud, and if the guesser hits 20, pass.

Solo is the relaxed option: anyone can answer, and there are no teams to track. With 2 to 4 teams, every card your team gets adds a point, and the scoreboard keeps totals across rounds.

How to ask good yes-or-no questions

• Start wide: “Am I a person?” “Am I an animal?” “Am I something you can eat?” Each answer rules out a huge chunk of the deck.
• Then narrow by size, place and use: “Am I bigger than a microwave?” “Would I be in a kitchen?”
• Don't guess too early. A wrong guess burns time you could spend on a better question.
• Say what you know out loud: “So I'm an animal, I live in water, and I'm not a fish.” It keeps you from asking the same thing twice.
• Answerers, stick to yes or no. Agree beforehand whether “sometimes” is allowed for tricky ones.
• Stuck for twenty seconds? Pass. There's always another card.

Ways to play

Where Who Am I? works best

It's a natural fit for family gatherings and holidays. The rules take ten seconds to explain, and anyone who can ask a yes-or-no question can play, from young kids to grandparents.

It also works well in classrooms. Put the game on a laptop, have a student face the class, and let everyone else answer. Every question follows the same simple pattern, which makes it good practice for language learners.

On a video call, the guesser can hold the phone up to the camera so everyone else can read the card. On road trips, passengers can play with Tap controls while the driver keeps their eyes on the road. And when you want a louder game, ManyMini has more that run on the same phone.

Where the who am I game comes from

Guessing a hidden answer with yes-or-no questions is very old. A game called twenty questions was already around in the 1780s: in a 1786 letter, the writer Hannah More mentioned teaching it at a London dinner party. Charles Dickens put a version called Yes and No into A Christmas Carol, and in 1946 Twenty Questions became a radio quiz show in the United States.

The forehead version, with a name on a sticky note or card you can't see, is a party classic in many countries. In Germany it's known as Wer bin ich?, which means the same thing. Who Am I? is our own free version: no download, no account and decks the whole family can play.

Questions