Hot and Cold game rules: how to play the classic hiding game

Hot and Cold is a hiding game: one player hunts for a hidden object while everyone else calls out how close they are. "Hot" means near, "cold" means far. No pointing, no naming the hiding place, no other clues.

How to play

1. Send the searcher out. They leave the room, or shut their eyes and count to twenty.
2. Hide something small. A spoon, a keyring, a soft toy. Leave it partly visible from somewhere in the room, and agree up front whether drawers are fair game.
3. Call them back in.
4. Guide them by temperature only. Closer is hotter, further is colder. That is the only information anyone gives.
5. They win by touching it. Whoever hid it searches next.

Two players and up, best at three to eight. Ages three and up. A round takes two to five minutes.

The callouts

Most groups use a ladder rather than just the two words:

• Freezing. Wrong end of the room.
• Cold. Wrong area, right direction.
• Cool. A few steps off.
• Warm. Right corner, right furniture.
• Hot. Within arm's reach.
• Boiling. About to touch it.

Six rungs beat two, because then every step the searcher takes changes the word, and the changing word is the trail. Be consistent: the same distance should get the same word all round, or the searcher can't trust what they're hearing.

Warmer and colder

Plenty of families play the identical game as Warmer and Colder. The difference is that those callouts describe the change rather than the position: "warmer" means your last step helped. That's harder, because it tells the searcher nothing about where they are, and it's the better version for older kids and adults.

Variations

• Hum it. Nobody speaks. The group hums louder as the searcher closes in. Best for children too young to hold the ladder in their heads, and it kills the shouting.
• One guide. A single player calls the temperature. Gives a bored child a real job.
• Teams on a timer. Two objects, two teams, fastest find wins. The simplest way to sell this to a group who think they've outgrown it.
• Hide a person. The outdoor version. Needs a boundary agreed in advance.
• Hunt the Thimble. The parlour-game ancestor. Players who spot the object sit down quietly instead of speaking, until one searcher is left.

The same idea, played with words

Our game, Hot & Cold, swaps the room for the English language. There's a secret word instead of a hidden object, and your guesses are the search. Guess ocean when the secret is whale and you run warm. Guess calculator and you freeze. Same ladder, except the closeness is measured rather than judged: every guess is ranked against about 15,000 words, so hot means the top 24 and blazing the top 6.

Play today's puzzle →

How to play walks a full round, and what is a semantic word game covers how a computer measures meaning at all.

Common questions

What does "hot and cold" mean?

It describes the feedback, not the goal: hot for near, cold for far. The phrase outgrew the game, which is why telling someone they're "getting warm" makes sense to anyone.

What age is it good for?

Three and up, with the humming version and an obvious hiding place at the youngest end. The full ladder works from about six, and warmer and colder from about ten.

Can you play without an object?

Yes. Hide a person, or pick a target to touch. You can also play it entirely out loud by thinking of a word and letting someone guess, which is roughly what we turned into an app.