Beat the Letter Back to the game Beat the Letter Back to the game Long drive ahead, and nobody agrees on the playlist? Make it a game. Everyone on the trip is dealt a handful of letters and races to name a song for each one — and at the end, every answer goes into one playlist for the road. Beat the Letter started the same way: a long drive coming up, and a playlist to make for it together.
Free, in the browser. Two to five players, one phone each, nothing to download and no account needed.
Start a gameWith a hand each, no letter is dealt twice, so the playlist has no repeats. Each round adds a song for every letter someone filled — a few rounds will fill a long drive.
Give a round a theme and the game checks every song against it: a 1980s round for the front seats, a hip hop round for the back.
The song letter game needs no phones at all, so the driver can play too: go round the car from A to Z, ten seconds to name a song for your letter, and no song twice. Or take the alphabet song challenge on your own and race a stopwatch through all twenty-six letters.
The playlist makes itself. Deal the letters, name the songs, and put the round on the speakers.
Play a roundThe song letter game: everyone takes a letter and names a song whose title starts with it. It needs nothing but the people in the car, and with Beat the Letter every answer goes into a playlist for the drive.
Make it a game so everybody gets a say. In Beat the Letter each passenger is dealt letters and names a song for each one; at the end of the round, anyone can turn all the answers into one YouTube playlist, in letter order.
Not while driving. Each player’s clock starts only when they open their own letters, so the driver can take their turn at the next stop and still be in the same round — or join the out-loud version, which needs no phone at all.
Yes — the game checks every song against a music catalogue as you type it. On a stretch with no signal, play the song letter game out loud and pick the round back up when the bars come back.
On YouTube. Anyone can open it in the YouTube app or a browser, with no account and no sign-in, and play it through the car’s speakers like any other video.