Ever played Mr. White? It’s a social deduction party game where everyone gets the same secret word… except one person (Mr. White) who gets nothing and has to bluff their way through.

We recently built a web version and it got me thinking about word pair categories.

The Challenge of Good Word Pairs

The magic of Mr. White is in the word pairs. They need to be:

  • Similar enough that Mr. White can pick up context clues
  • Different enough that players can subtly hint without giving it away
  • Universally known so everyone can participate

Pop Culture Pairs

Pop culture is perfect for this. Everyone knows these rivalries:

  • Marvel vs DC - Easy to hint at with superhero references
  • PlayStation vs Xbox - Gamers will have strong opinions
  • Netflix vs YouTube - Different vibes, same screen time
  • Star Wars vs Star Trek - The eternal sci-fi debate
  • Beatles vs Rolling Stones - Classic rock showdown

The beauty is that fans will naturally drop references that make sense for either option.

Food & Drink Pairs

Food works great too because everyone eats:

  • Coffee vs Tea - Morning ritual tribes
  • Pizza vs Burger - The fast food championship
  • Tacos vs Burritos - Same ingredients, different packaging
  • Pancakes vs Waffles - Breakfast wars
  • Ketchup vs Mustard - Condiment loyalty runs deep

Building It

The game itself is pure vanilla JavaScript - no frameworks needed for something this simple. The tricky part was:

  1. Fair distribution - Making sure Mr. White doesn’t get obvious disadvantages
  2. Category hints - Giving Mr. White a fighting chance with category names
  3. Voting UX - Making accusations dramatic but functional

Check it out if you want to play at your next gathering!

What word pairs would you add? The best ones are those where both words could plausibly fit the same description.