The Rhyme Game Play now

How to play the rhyme game

A New York subway platform at night, a train with red graffiti standing with its doors open

A beat, a bouncing ball and a rhyme on beat four. Here is everything the game lets you change.

A beat plays and a ball bounces across the screen, one hop per beat, four beats to a bar. Each bar ends with a rhyme word on the fourth beat. Your job is the three beats before it: say anything that gets you to that word on time.

The basics in one minute

  1. Pick a tempo. 85 to 95 BPM is a good start.
  2. Choose how much help you want and a rhyme scheme.
  3. Press Start. You get one bar of clicks to count you in.
  4. Follow the ball. When it lands on the coloured word, say the word.
  5. Keep going until the round ends, or press Stop. You see how many bars you rapped.

How much help you get

HelpWhat you seeWhat it trains
All wordsEvery rhyme wordTiming and flow
First onlyThe first word of each rhyme pairFinding a rhyme on the spot
Last onlyOnly the word you rhyme intoSetting up a punchline
No wordsColoured slots, no wordsEverything, with no help

Rhyme schemes

Words that rhyme share a colour. AABB rhymes bars one and two, then three and four. ABAB rhymes one with three and two with four, so you hold a sound across a line. AAAA puts all four bars on one sound, the hardest of the three.

Levels

  • Warm-up: all words, AABB, 85 BPM.
  • Cypher: first only, AABB, 90 BPM.
  • Battle: last only, ABAB, 95 BPM.
  • Off the top: no words, AABB, any tempo.

Words, beats and your own music

Word lists: Everyday (short common words), Rap, Multisyllable, or My words, where you type your own and the game finds rhymes for them. Beats: boom bap, lo-fi, trap, a plain click, or silent. To rap over a song you are playing elsewhere, set the beat to Silent, then tap Tap tempo along with the song.

Streaks

Rap at least 8 bars in a day and the day counts toward your streak. The streak, your best run and your total bars are saved in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no account.

Keys

Space starts and pauses a round, Escape stops it.

Play a round now