Tabletop Tuesdays – where I ramble about tabletop games, be they board games or RPGs. Can I make this a weekly thing? I don’t really know, but let’s at least try it out this week!



Recently, during the slow days leading up to the holiday, I brought some games to work for us to play to fill the quiet hours. I wanted to bring something we could play quickly during lunch break, something that could be taught in a matter of minutes and that wouldn’t take too much time to set up. So I grabbed “Stay Cool”.



The game is relatively simple – one person is answering questions while two other people ask them. There is a three minute timer and you play over three rounds. The catch? You will be asked TWO questions at the same time, one you answer verbally and the other you must spell out using a set of four dice. The egg timer slowly drops sand in front of you and is flipped after a minute by your team mates until you’ve flipped it three times.

The verbal questions are relatively easy – identify something in the group of words that doesn’t belong, put a set of numbers in descending order, spell a word backwards, name what street you live on, what’s your favorite color – things you have to take a moment to process but can answer relatively quickly. The answers you need to spell out are only four letters long and the questions are not very tricky, it’s just about rolling the dice fast enough to spell while trying to answer your verbal question.

Not too bad, you might think. But that is just the first round. Second round, it is up to the person answering the questions to also watch the timer, shouting “FLIP!” before the sand runs out or they lose the round.

And then the final round – again, the answerer (?) is in charge of the timer flips, but they can’t SEE the timer as it is hidden behind the game box.

As per usual, I found out about this game via Dicebreaker and you can watch their Let’s Play video to get a taste of the chaos this game brings.



I think the most amusing part of this game is watching people so caught up in the moment, that they fumble simple questions, like “are you wearing pants?” or “do you own a dog?” The game is translated from French and I have noticed a few translation quirks where the phrasing of the question doesn’t make sense. There were also a few questions that were a bit NSFW that I wasn’t aware of until we started playing at work – one asked who do you think of this group was most likely to have an extramarital affair!!! And another asked what color underwear you were wearing! I mean, obviously there is no way to verify either of these questions, they are there to make the person go “WHAT?!?” and then awkwardly say their friend is an adulterer just to get the point (my coworker had no problem doing this LOL).

While my coworkers thought this game was hilarious (one of them immediately bought a copy), my stepdaughter did NOT like this game at all. It was too anxiety-inducing for her taste and she couldn’t enjoy the wild ride for what it was, I think she took it too seriously. So it will depend on your friend’s personalities and who can take the pressure and make it fun.

I was awful at remembering the timer, but we had so much fun laughing together that I want to bring this game back to work for our next staff day (though I might go through some of the question cards before we start to remove any more of the more intimate questions).

Have you played ‘Stay Cool‘ ? Do you have a favorite party game? Let me know in the comments!