This is the phone game for deciding who pays, who goes first, or who takes the forfeit. On your turn you start the watch and stop it, twice. The hundredths digit of each reading — the 7 in «12.47» — is what counts, and the two digits multiplied together are your score. Scores run from 0 to 81, and because it is a product, a single zero takes the whole thing to nothing, so in practice the game is about avoiding zero rather than chasing nine. Two to eight players, names optional, and a blind mode that hides the running digits so nobody can aim. Everything happens in the browser with no account and no install.
The digit that counts is the hundredths place shown on screen. Scoring on a digit the player cannot see would make the result impossible to accept.
Zero is the single likeliest score. A zero on either stop kills the product, which happens on roughly one turn in five.
Ties are shown as shared places rather than broken silently. Ties are common here, and an invented ordering could not be explained to the player who lost by it.
Names and scores live on screen only. Reloading the page starts a fresh game.
On your turn you press once to run the watch and once to stop it. The number left on screen, say «12.47», contributes its final digit, 7. Stop a second time for a second digit, and the product of the two is your score.
The range runs from 0×0 to 9×9, that is 0 to 81. Multiplying rather than adding is what spreads the field: a sum would bunch everyone between 0 and 18 and produce constant ties, while a product lifts only the player who drew two large digits.
The page is built for one phone passed around. Two presses per turn, hand it on, and the standings appear once the last player is done.
A single digit is zero one time in ten. Across two stops, the chance of at least one zero is 1 − (9/10)², about 19 per cent — roughly one turn in five. Because the score is a product, that one zero takes everything.
So what actually happens at the table is less «go for a nine» and more «please not a zero». The player who opens with nine and then lands on zero is the running joke of this game.
The mean score is 4.5 × 4.5 = 20.25, but the median sits well below it: the distribution is squashed toward zero, so anything over twenty is usually near the top of the table.
By default the digits are visible. The hundredths place changes a hundred times a second, so hitting an exact digit is out of reach, but aiming at a rough window — just after zero passes, say — is not. Human timing scatters by around a tenth of a second, which is enough for «trying to dodge zero» to be a real attempt.
Turning on blind mode replaces the running number with «• • •» until you stop. That makes the outcome pure chance and removes the «you aimed for that» argument, which is usually what you want when a forfeit is at stake.
In both modes the digit is revealed the instant the watch stops. Hiding the result would turn the game into a draw announcement, and nobody accepts those.
Ties are common here. Zero alone shows up about one turn in five, so with four players a round with two zeroes is routine. If the page quietly ranked «whoever stopped first» above the rest, there would be no way to justify that to the loser.
Instead tied players share a place and the page says to run it again between them. Set the player count to the number of tied players and play one more round.
If you are using it to pick a forfeit rather than a winner, read the table from the bottom. Agree which end counts before you start and the same standings work either way.
The most common use is deciding who picks up the bill. A full table takes about thirty seconds, and people accept the result more readily than a draw or a ladder — because each of them pressed the button themselves.
It also sets an order: read the scores downward and you have a running order for presentations, karaoke or anything else. Eight players still fit on one screen.
Nothing about the game requires drinks. What the forfeit is stays a decision for the table.
The screen needs three labels — start, stop, next player — plus one result line. The rules are identical in every language: two stops, multiply the last digits, share tied places.
Names typed in any script appear as typed in the standings, and they are never stored; leaving the page clears them.
Each player stops the watch twice. The last digit of each reading — the hundredths place — is taken, the two digits are multiplied, and the highest product wins. Played the other way round, the lowest product takes the forfeit.
The last one shown, that is the hundredths place: 7 in «12.47», 0 in «3.20». Milliseconds are deliberately not used, because scoring on a digit nobody can see turns the result into an announcement rather than a game.
The score becomes zero. It is a product, so one zero on either stop is enough. That is why the real tension sits on the second stop — a player who opened with a nine and then draws a zero is the most common reversal in the game.
It covers the running digits with «• • •» so you cannot aim at a number. With digits visible you can at least try to time a stop; blind, it is pure chance. Either way the digit is always revealed the moment you stop.
Tied players share the place and the page suggests running it again between them. Nothing is broken automatically — zero-zero ties are frequent, and an automatic winner would have no justification behind it.