A card they play

How it works

1. Write it

   Six questions, one at a time. Only one of them takes any thought, and it is the one worth thinking about.

2. Get a link

   The link is the card. Send it the way you send anything else — a message, an email, written on a napkin.

3. They play it

   A short game that knows their name, with your jokes on signs along the way. Then your message, which is the point of all of it.

What goes in it

Five short answers. We ask for nothing else, from you or from them.

• Their first name

  It is what the game calls them, the whole way through. A first name is all it needs.

• The occasion

  A birthday, an anniversary, a new job, a thank you, no occasion at all — or whatever it actually is, in your words.

• Private jokes

  Up to five. They turn up on signs the player runs past, which is a strange place for them and a good one.

• Your message

  Read at the end, by somebody who has just finished playing. Say the thing you would say out loud.

• Your name

  So they know who it is from before they start rather than after.

See one

A card written for nobody in particular, so you can see what arrives before you write your own.

The plain version

• It is free while we are building it. If that ever changes, cards already made stay made.
• There are no accounts, on either side. Whoever holds the link holds the card, so pass it on the way you would a letter rather than a password.
• We keep what you wrote, because the card has to still work when they open it. We ask for nothing else about you, and nothing at all about them beyond a first name.
• Whatever they say back appears on the card itself, so you find it by opening the link you sent. Which also means anybody else holding that link can read it.

Write one

It takes about a minute, and you can change your mind about every word until the moment you make the link.