Create your own 5 Second Rule prompts

The seven built-in decks (Animals, Food, Geography, Movies, Sports, Music, General) are broad enough to work for any group, but the best 5 Second Rule rounds happen when the prompts feel personal. A category like “name 3 streets in our hometown” lands harder than “name 3 places in Europe” because the room actually cares about the answers.

That's what custom prompts are for. Anything you write here is added to a “Custom” deck on the homepage. Tick that deck in the Categories grid and your prompts will appear during play, mixed in with whatever other decks you've enabled.

Where they're stored

Custom prompts are saved in your browser's local storage. They never leave your device. They'll still be here next time you open this page on the same browser, but clearing browser data will remove them. The full storage explanation is in the Privacy Policy.

The mechanic forces a player to name three things in five seconds. That gives you a tight constraint to design around. The prompts that work best share a few traits:

• Start with “Name 3…” — it sets the format instantly. Players don't waste a second figuring out what kind of answer is expected.
• Keep the category narrow enough to be specific, wide enough to have at least ten valid answers. “Name 3 capitals of European countries” works. “Name 3 capitals of Liechtenstein” doesn't.
• Avoid prompts that need explanation. If you have to clarify the category mid-round, it kills the timer pressure. Re-write before saving.
• Test difficulty out loud first. Try to come up with three answers yourself in five seconds. If you can't, your players probably can't either — rephrase or pick a more common topic.
• One concept per prompt. “Name 3 movies AND 3 actors” is two prompts. Split them.

Family game night

• Name 3 vegetables nobody in this room likes.
• Name 3 things in our kitchen junk drawer.
• Name 3 movies we've watched together.
• Name 3 places we've been on holiday.
• Name 3 chores you keep forgetting to do.

Classroom warm-up

• Name 3 countries that border [country we just studied].
• Name 3 elements on the periodic table starting with C.
• Name 3 books we've read this term.
• Name 3 prime numbers under 50.
• Name 3 prepositions.

Office / team-building

• Name 3 acronyms only this team would understand.
• Name 3 things in everyone's desk drawer.
• Name 3 meetings that could have been an email.
• Name 3 conference rooms in this office.
• Name 3 of our project codenames.

Couples / two-player nights

• Name 3 restaurants we've been to twice.
• Name 3 albums we both like.
• Name 3 of each other's small habits.
• Name 3 cities we've talked about visiting.
• Name 3 movies we walked out of.

You're writing prompts for whoever's in the room — set the tone for them. Custom prompts are stored on your device, but they will be read aloud to your group, so:

• For mixed-age groups, stick with topics suitable for the youngest player. Even if older players would enjoy edgier prompts, the timer pressure makes people answer fast — which is the worst time to discover that a category was a bad idea.
• Don't target individuals in a hurtful way. “Name 3 of Alex's worst habits” reads funny in your head; under timer pressure it becomes a roast that goes on too long. Group-based prompts work, person-attack prompts don't.
• Avoid harmful, hateful, illegal, or abusive content. The Terms of Use ask players not to create that kind of content. We don't see what you write — there's no moderation pipeline because we don't collect prompts — but you and your group are responsible for keeping it appropriate.

• Add prompts in batches of five. Eight to twelve custom prompts is usually enough for a 10-round game (the deck doesn't repeat within a round).
• Mix custom with built-in. Most groups have more fun when custom prompts share the deck with at least one built-in category. Pure custom decks can feel lopsided unless you've written 20+ prompts.
• Edit aggressively. Delete prompts that didn't land, edit ones that needed an explanation. The editor stores everything locally so no roundtrip.
• For longer reads, see How to create your own 5 Second Rule prompts or Prompts by difficulty: easy, medium, hard on the blog.