Ravi's Book Quiz

Two members stand at the library counter, pass one phone back and forth, and settle who actually read the book.

Who this is for

Ravi Deshmukh runs a lending library in one room above a photocopy shop in Dharwad. About four hundred books, sixty members, 120 rupees a month. Sunday mornings the room fills up and nobody leaves quickly. People return books, argue about endings, wait for someone to vacate the plastic chair. That loose half hour, when two members are standing at the counter with nothing to do, is where this game lands.

How the job is done today

Ravi does it by mouth. He asks whoever is standing there who Sudha Murty's grandmother was in Wise and Otherwise, or which Ruskin Bond story has the leopard. Right answers get a nod. Score goes on the back of an old membership card, or nowhere. By next Sunday the card is gone and Meena insists she was ahead of Girish, and Girish insists otherwise, and Ravi cannot say. He has asked the same twenty questions for two years because the good ones live only in his head.

The screens, in order

1. Standings — Shows who is on top right now, so anyone glancing at the counter phone knows what they are playing for.
2. Pick two players — Ravi taps the two names standing in front of him, or adds a new member's name in three seconds.
3. Your turn — A plain screen holding one player's five questions, one at a time, with no hint of whether they got it right.
4. Pass the phone — A cover screen that hides everything and waits until the second player says they have the phone.
5. Result — Reveals both players' answers side by side at the end, so the arguing has something to point at.
6. Ravi's questions — Lets Ravi type in a question the moment it occurs to him, before he forgets it again.

What it keeps track of

• Members — name, what they mostly read, rounds played, rounds won, points, when they last played
• Questions — the question, four choices, which one is right, which book it came from, easy or hard, who added it
• Rounds — which two players, which day, the five questions asked, what each one answered, who won

The one decision that matters

Do you show a player whether they got it right straight after each question, or hold everything back until both have played? Instant right-or-wrong is more fun in the moment. But the other player is standing eighteen inches away in a small room and will hear the phone buzz and watch the face. Hold it back. Both players answer the same five questions blind, the phone goes face down between turns, and the answers appear together at the end. Overhearing then gains nothing, and the reveal becomes the best part of the round rather than a leak.

What to leave out of the first version

No logins, no passwords, no playing from two different phones. The game exists because two people are already standing at the same counter with the same half hour to kill. Remote play would turn it into something people do alone at home, which is the one thing a lending library does not need. Also leave out question difficulty scoring and any timer. Ravi wants people to think about the book, not race.

How you would know it worked

A Sunday comes when someone walks up the stairs, does not have a book to return, and asks Ravi whether Girish has played yet this week.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run a small lending library and my members like arguing about books, so I want a quiz game they play at my counter on one phone. I pick two names, the first person answers five questions about books, then the screen goes blank and says to hand the phone over, and the second person answers the same five without ever seeing whether the first one got them right. At the end it shows both their answers together and who won. Keep a running table of everyone's wins and points that I can show people. I want to be able to type in my own questions with four choices and mark the correct one, because I have plenty in my head. No passwords, no signing in, my members are not going to do that.