Beat the Letter Back to the game

Song Scattergories

Song Scattergories is what people call the music version of the classic category game: one letter, a timer, and everyone racing to name songs that start with it. You can play it with paper and a pen — or let a game keep the time, check the answers and settle the arguments for you.

How a round works in Beat the Letter

1. Start a game and send the invite link to your friends.
2. Everyone is dealt their own letters — a hand each, not one letter for the whole table.
3. Name a song for every letter. Type the title, and the game checks the song is real. It never suggests one, so you can only name songs you know.
4. Beat the clock. The first player to fill their hand starts the countdown for everyone else.
5. See who won, hear what everybody picked, and turn the answers into a YouTube playlist.

Nobody has to be there at the same time: each player’s clock starts when they open their own letters, so a round works around one table or across a group chat over a day.

Categories, built in

The host can give a round a theme, and the game checks every answer against it — so nobody has to argue about whether a song counts.

• 1970s
• 1980s
• 1990s
• 2000s
• 2010s
• One-word titles
• Rock
• Pop
• Hip hop
• Dance
• R&B

Playing on paper

1. Pick a letter. Roll a letter die or draw a letter tile. Everyone plays the same one.
2. Set a timer for two minutes.
3. Write down songs whose titles start with the letter — as many as you can, or one for each category on a list like the one below.
4. Read them out. Any song somebody else also wrote is crossed off for both of you; the rest score a point each.

Agree before you start whether a leading “The” counts, and leave out Q, X and Z — or make them worth double. A round on B might go: one player writes “Basket Case”, “Budapest” and “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”; another writes “Budapest” and “Bad Moon Rising”. “Budapest” is crossed off both lists, and the first player takes the round two to one.

Twelve music categories

For the category version, read out one letter and fill in one song per line.

1. A song from the 1980s
2. A one-word title
3. A song by a band, not a solo artist
4. A song with a color in the title
5. A song from a movie or a musical
6. A song you would hear at a wedding
7. A song with a name in the title
8. A song by a woman
9. A song with a number in the title
10. A song released this century
11. A song to sing in the car
12. A song nobody else will think of

Stuck on a letter?

Every letter has a page of well-known songs — for checking answers after a round, or for warming up before one.

Questions

Scattergories is a trademark of Hasbro. Beat the Letter is an independent game and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Hasbro.