The questions
Each side comes with one line of the case for it. The rest is up to you.
To text or not to text: should you double text when they haven't replied?
- YEA DOUBLE TEXT
Messages get buried, and a second one floats yours back to the top.
- NAY WAIT IT OUT
They saw the first one, and a second just shows you're counting hours.
- YEA DOUBLE TEXT
Brevity is the soul of wit. Every text read aloud, or every call on speaker?
- TEXTS ALOUD
Plenty of couples knew on day one and still say so fifty years later.
- ON SPEAKER
A glance tells you they're cute, not how they treat a waiter.
- TEXTS ALOUD
I've written 17 weddings. Can you say no to being in your friend's wedding?
- YEA SAY NO
Better they hear it from you now than figure it out a year from now.
- NAY SHOW UP
People defend who they love, and you become the bad guy instead.
- YEA SAY NO
Romeo knew in one look. Can you ask for the check halfway through a bad date?
- YEA CHECK PLEASE
Your friends get to see it happen instead of hearing about it later.
- NAY STICK IT OUT
With a crowd watching, saying no isn't really an option.
- YEA CHECK PLEASE
My plays are full of meddling. Should you set up two of your friends?
- YEA PLAY CUPID
You know them both, which is more than any dating app can say.
- NAY DON'T MEDDLE
If it goes badly, you sit between them at every party forever.
- YEA PLAY CUPID
Exit, pursued by a bear. Is leaving a group chat without a word rude?
- YEA RUDE
Everyone sees that you left and spends a week wondering what they did.
- NAY NOT RUDE
Nobody owes a farewell speech to 30 people arguing about brunch.
- YEA RUDE
Lend me your ears. Can you stop answering a friend who only calls to complain?
- YEA STOP ANSWERING
You're proud of them, and a photo now and then just says so.
- NAY KEEP ANSWERING
Every post is one more thing to quietly delete if it ends.
- YEA STOP ANSWERING
I wrote 154 sonnets. A partner who cooks every night, or one who cleans every day?
- COOKS
The last ten minutes at the door are often the best talk of the night.
- CLEANS
You've said bye three times and now you're sweating in your coat.
- COOKS
About the host
William Shakespeare wrote close to forty plays, and most of them turn on someone saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. Letters go astray and friends meddle. In one play a man exits, pursued by a bear. Four hundred years later the plots have barely changed. We just send them by text now.
Nothing much is on the calendar in mid-November, which suits a writer who never needed a holiday to start a fight. So he's taking the week. His eight questions are about love and what phones have done to it: double texting, love at first sight, the friend who is dating a fool. He wrote the first drafts of most of these arguments. You get to finish them.
How to play these
Open with the double text. Everyone at the table has a rule about it, and no two rules match. The friend dating a fool and setting up two friends get personal fast, so save them for when the room is warm. If anyone at the table was set up by someone else at the table, play that one last.
To play them as plain talk, read a question, count to three and have everyone point a thumb up or down, then make the smaller side go first. As a round of The Lobbyist, the love questions are good cover for a liar, because everyone has a strong opinion and a weak reason. Ask for the story behind it. Real opinions usually come with one. There are more like these in our debate questions for couples.
About guest decks
Much Ado is William Shakespeare's guest deck for The Lobbyist, free to play from Nov 13 to Nov 19, 2026. A new guest moves in every Friday with eight questions of their own. See this week's guest.
The guest before: Armchair Referee, hosted by Coach Hollerman.
Play the guest deck
Start a game and pick this week's guest deck, or Fuzzy Logic. Both are free.
Play free