Play Book Tag discussion
2025 Activities and Challenges
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Challenges for 2026 Under Development
Wheel of FortuneThe administrator selects a book from our shelves. For example: "I'm Glad My Mom Died" by Jenette McCurdy
We present the title wheel of fortune style (note: the little carets divide the words because otherwise it's visually impossible - - I tried!):
_ ' _ ^ _ _ _ _^ _ _ ^ _ _ _ ^ _ _ _ _ ^ by _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ^ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The players earn the right to guess a letter by completing and reviewing a book that fits the tag for the month.
Players may also buy a vowel using participation points i.e. 10 points per vowel.
We unveil the letters as they are guessed. First person who enters the correct title on the thread wins 5 raffle entries.
Anyone who subsequently reads and reviews an unveiled title (they have all year to do it), gets 10 participation points (20 if they do it in a month where the title matches a tag) plus a raffle entry.
Titles will be posted twice a week generally on a set schedule i.e. Monday/Thursday. Schedule changes will be announced in advance.
At the end of the year, after the challenge is over, we'll hold a drawing for a prize.
Down the Rabbit HoleHave you ever found yourself stumbling across something in your reading repeatedly? Maybe every book you pick up has a rabbit in it and you become interested in rabbits and seek out books with them so you can find out more. You have gone down a rabbit hole in your reading.
We have developed the Down the Rabbit Hole challenge to encourage this type of exploration and hopefully some interesting and enlightening conversations.
- We will need your help in generating ideas for rabbit hole investigations.
- We will randomize your ideas and present 5 Rabbit Holes a month for you to go down.
Here is an example of 1 month’s choices
Rabbit Holes of the month
Horses
City life
Building/architecture/engineering
AI
WWI/The Great War
-We will present 5 Rabbit Holes each month
-Participants may read any or all
-Extra points for matching PBTag of the month
-Extra points for reading 5 books in a Rabbit Hole or reading 1 book for 5 Rabbit Holes.
For those members who find a Rabbit Hole which they like once a quarter they may designate one rabbit hole as their "warren". They can stay in their warren as long as they want, and every book they read in their warren gets them a raffle entry.
Such fun! A question for BnB on Rabbit Hole:
Would each book in a rabbit hole simply have to include a piece of information about the subject? (Which should then be repeated as part of reporting). It presumably wouldn’t be enough to have just a passing mention of a horse or rabbit. Or does it have to be a key theme of the book so you are deliberately learning a lot about rabbits or horses?
KateNZ wrote: "Such fun! A question for BnB on Rabbit Hole:
Would each book in a rabbit hole simply have to include a piece of information about the subject? (Which should then be repeated as part of reporting..."
It would need to be more than a passing mention.
For horses something like Perestroika in Paris, Horse, The Giver of Stars, or Silk Route Adventure: On Horseback in the Heart of Asia.
That being said, the 5 tag rule would work or a possibly a picture on the cover.
Down the Rabbit Hole is such a 'me' challenge! But of course I know you know that BnB.Wheel of Fortune - What a clever idea, Anita! I just watched it the other night for the first time in a long time. I like word puzzles generally, and always enjoy trying to guess it.
At the moment, no questions, but I'm sure there will be some.
I never liked the Wheel of Fortune show because there’s no reward for guessing it quickly, you have to drag it out to get more points.And I think the WOF game here will be too putzy for me. I do like the rabbit hole idea.
I have a question about the Wheel of Fortune rules: if we already know the title was chosen from a public list of one of the group members, wouldn't it be easier to browse that list/shelf and find the book instead of trying to guess the title?
Algernon (Darth Anyan) wrote: "I have a question about the Wheel of Fortune rules: if we already know the title was chosen from a public list of one of the group members, wouldn't it be easier to browse that list/shelf and find ..."It may help, but we have over 14 thousand books on our shelf, so I'm not too worried about it. Guessing the title is only one aspect of the challenge.
Time TravelWhat if we could move through time and had a portal which would take us backwards and forwards through time. We are planning to do that with our Time Travel challenge this year.
Here is how it will work. Everyone’s game starts with the current year. From that point we will roll the dice once a week with one roll for all participants.
Participants may l move backwards or forwards that number of years, but also have the option of adding zeros to the total. For example if 12 is rolled, movement could be forward or back 12, 120 or 1200 years.
The date is determined by year of first publication or by statement in the book which ascertains the year in which the book takes place.
-Dice roll once a week for all.
-Review must be posted previous to the roll of the week.
-Players may take the roll as it as is or add as many zeros as they want to..
-Players may move either forward or back in time as they choose. -The date can either be the time of publication or setting date.
-Players should track the years traveled and the books read for the challenge.
-Extra game points for matching PBTag of the month.
Understanding that it is difficult to reach a particular year the further back you travel, the following handicaps will be provided:
2025 -1975 - Exact date required
1974 - 1900 - 5 year latitude given
1899 - 1800 - 10 year latitude
1799 - 1600 - 15 years
1599 - 1400 - 25 years
1399 - 1000 - 50 years
999 - 1 AD - 100 years
BC - ?
Booknblues wrote: "Time TravelWhat if we could move through time and had a portal which would take us backwards and forwards through time. We are planning to do that with our Time Travel challenge this year.
Here..."
I like the time travel idea, preferably with setting date, not the publication date.
Algernon (Darth Anyan) wrote: "Booknblues wrote: "Time TravelWhat if we could move through time and had a portal which would take us backwards and forwards through time. We are planning to do that with our Time Travel challeng..."
We will accept both, but completely understand if you choose to use one over the other.
Blind DateThis activity will take place once per month for all of 2026. Players do not need to play each month.
It will kick off with each player selecting a 5 star read from their own shelves. The book must be readily available at most libraries - - so written say prior to 2022 (we may do one or two months that are the exception to the rule, but in general I want people to be able to obtain the books to read).
Without giving away the title (or any major clues), the player is going to make a "dating profile" for the book based on a series of prompts (which I will provide and will consist of provide 5-10 easy questions) and an option to write up to 5 lines that sell the book.
These descriptions will be sent to me privately.
Then, we will hold a swap similar to our prompt swaps. The first person will select a number, and I will reveal the book profile that corresponds to that number. Then, the next person can either steal that book, or they can open a new one. Play will continue until all the profiles are revealed and everyone has a book.
Then, I will reveal the titles for each book.
Each player will have the option to read the book they end up with. There is no time limit on reading the book so long as it is completed by year end. Participation points will be awarded as follows:
1. Read the book you open - 10 points
2. Contribute the most swapped profile for the month- 10 points
3. Win the participant vote for best title - 10 points (Once the titles are revealed there will be a poll on which book is the best of the selections offered that month. Whoever profiled it will be awarded the 10 points.)
If you start the book and dislike it, OR you have read the book before and do not want to re-read it, you may GHOST it. Ghosting it will involve not reading it and posting it in a designating thread. Then, anyone else who participated in any swap during the course year may pick it up and read it for 5 participation points. Once a title is picked up, it will be removed from the list of ghosted titles that are available.
Anyone who reads 12 books from the Blind Date activity will get a raffle entry for a prize.
I love both of these, but I also really like The Rabbit Hole! decisions, decisions!
Joanne wrote: "I love both of these, but I also really like The Rabbit Hole! decisions, decisions!"Well, you will be voting for one from two separate groups. So far, we have:
Batch 1:
Down the Rabbit Hole
Time Travel
Batch 2:
Wheel of Fortune
Blind Date
World Cup Tribute
And we each have one more in development.
Booknblues wrote: "Time TravelWhat if we could move through time and had a portal which would take us backwards and forwards through time. We are planning to do that with our Time Travel challenge this year.
Here..."
As someone who reads a lot of historical fiction, historical mysteries and historical romance, I love this. But the years would have to be approximate, for instance if I read a book set in 1942, then got 12 and chose to make it 120 and go back to 1822, it's almost impossible to find a book for that exact year. I think decades should be close enough. If I read a book set in 2000 and go back 50 years, I think anything from 1950-59 should count. It's just too hard to find a book written about a specific year (unless it's a famous event) or know ahead of time the exact year. Yes, we could use publication dates but that's still quite limiting. And lots of books are deliberately vague on the year, especially those set in the future.
Anita wrote: "Blind DateThis activity will take place once per month for all of 2026. Players do not need to play each month.
It will kick off with each player selecting a 5 star read from their own shelves. ..."
My concern here is that for many of the highly rated books, I have either read them already or decided not to read them. And some of you read even more currently popular books than I do.
I don't mean to be critical. I'm amazed at the creativity of our Mods in coming up with multiple games every year! Of course, the games are optional. This year I have enjoyed Read Harder and I'm very happy that I chose not to do Compass.
Definitely no pressure at all to do any challenges that don't seem appealing. There are a lot of challenge groups on Goodreads, and we are just very happy if people join us for reading the tag and to come talk about books and help create community. I think a lot of our members participate in other challenges with other groups and may be able to point the way to the best ones.There are still a couple of more ideas forthcoming so maybe one of them will be more appealing, but we totally will understand if not! Every year is a bit different.
Robin P wrote: "Anita wrote: "Blind DateThis activity will take place once per month for all of 2026. Players do not need to play each month.
It will kick off with each player selecting a 5 star read from their..."
Oh also, just to clarify because you raise a good point - - we mean 5 star to the person who has read the book. Not a 5 star book as rated by everyone on Goodreads. The book should be from the person's own shelves and needs to be 5 stars in their opinion.
It might not be well liked or well known on Goodreads at all necessarily.
World Cup TributeThis summer is the World Cup, so thought it would be fun to organize a challenge around it.
Currently, 28 countries have qualified, but there will be a total of 48 countries represented.
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to predict the tournament winner before the finals!
In order to register a prediction, you must read a book set in the country of your prediction. So, for example, if you think New Zealand will win the whole thing, you will read a book from New Zealand. You have until quarter finals on July 9 to register your predictions.
So you can read widely trying to cover as many of the qualifying countries as possible. OR, you can load up on a few countries, reading multiple books from the country you think will win.
You will win participation points if you correctly predict the quarterfinalists or the semi-finalists (I believe there are four) or the tournament winner.
Quarter-finalists - 10 points if you correctly predict any of the quarter-finalists
Semi-finalists - 25 points if you correctly predict any of the semi-finalists
Finalist - 100 points if you correctly predict the finalist
The points are additive, so if a quarterfinalist moves on, you get points from each stage of progression.
If you read multiple books for a given country, you'll get a multiplier applied to all earned points.
1st book - multiple by 1
2nd book - multiply by 1.2
3rd book - multiple by 1.3
etc.
i.e. If New Zealand is the winner, and you read three books set in New Zealand, you will get (10 + 25 + 100) x 1.3 = 176 participation points.
After the tournament is over, you may still earn additional points by reading books set in any of countries that made it to the quarterfinals at 8 participation points per book completed. However, AFTER the tournament is over, the book must also fit the tag for the month in which you read it (earning you a total of 10 points per book).
Everyone will be responsible for their own record keeping and points will be recorded in the participation points spreadsheet after the finals and at year end.
Last one!Leap Frog
Do you remember playing Leap Frog as a kid, well we are going to play Leap Frog with PBT Top Ten Books.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q...
Each month we will randomly list 10 PBT favorites from the Top Ten of the year.
Participants will choose the PBT favorite to start leaping them and choosing a book that will link to it. We did a linking game with teams several years ago so this will be like that.
As an example:
Participant reads Crow Talk and links using “birds” with To Kill a Mockingbird, the PBT favorite book
Participant then reads The Nickel Boys and the link is “Social Justice”
And then links Born a Crime the PBT favorite book
Each month we will list 10 books from the PBT Favorites of the year list.
Participant reads a book that connects in some way to a book from the PBT Favorites listed that month.
Participant does not have to read PBT Fav.
Participants may use any from the list and as many as they can link with the books they are reading in a given month.
For the following month a new list will be presented. You will not be able to use those from the previous month.
You may continue on with your last link of the previous month or start anew.
Please track the number of books you read, the number of PBT Favorites you leaped and your longest linking.
BnB -on the Time Travel, does every one get their own dice roll or is it one roll for all participating - meaning, to use your example, all use 12 as the dice roll on which they base their time jump.
One roll for all.We thought it would be fun to see what different directions all would take with the same number.
I love that idea! I had the same thought immediately.I also like the self-driven aspect, which is very similar to this year's The Compass - travel through eras and history rather than geographic and cultural.
Anita - Blind Date is so cool! It's got elements of Happy Birthday as well as our recent swap. I like the relaxed pace of once a month.
Anita, World Cup sounds awesome. I think predictions will have to be in before 5 July though, as the quarter finalists will start to be known as each game in the round of 16 is played? Or have I misread the schedule?
KateNZ wrote: "Anita, World Cup sounds awesome. I think predictions will have to be in before 5 July though, as the quarter finalists will start to be known as each game in the round of 16 is played? Or have I mi..."Lol, any HELP anyone can give me with how the World Cup actually works is MOST welcomed. I literally looked at the website for like an hour, and I still couldn't figure it out very well.
So let's just say the dates will be adjusted before game play starts, but I think I'm in the vicinity . . .and if someone with more expertise in soccer would like to be an advisor, I'm all about it.
I do have someone in my apartment building who is really into it, so I figured I could confer with him at worst case.
Theresa wrote: "Anita - Blind Date is so cool! It's got elements of Happy Birthday as well as our recent swap. I like the relaxed pace of once a month."Thank you so much, Theresa! The initial idea was BooknBlues', but I loved it and made it may own. I think it would be super fun to run it.
I love Blind Date, too! With all the humor that could come out of the profiles, I think this could be a real hoot to play or just read!
I’ve only skimmed … so far rabbit hole and leap frog fit my reading style. I love to find books that are connected in some way, and I like to do deep dives once in a while. I already have a few topics in mind for deep dives and maybe I’d get lucky. I won’t have as much time to read next year, and I’d like to keep it simple. I going to stay away from random, complicated, and time consuming challenges next year. I’d prefer challenges that involve 12-40 books for the year. This year I’ll have over 100.
The blind date sounds very fun . I might have to skip the swap if the timing is bad, but it will be fun ti read the descriptions .
NancyJ wrote: "I’ve only skimmed … so far rabbit hole and leap frog fit my reading style. I love to find books that are connected in some way, and I like to do deep dives once in a while. I already have a few topics in mind for deep dives and maybe I’d get lucky...."
I don't remember if I said it in my description of Rabbit Hole, but I will definitely be eliciting ideas from members for Rabbit Hole.
Robin P wrote: "Booknblues wrote: "Time TravelWhat if we could move through time and had a portal which would take us backwards and forwards through time. We are planning to do that with our Time Travel challeng..."
I understand what you are saying, although in many cases, I think historical fiction does give you a clue as to the exact date and many books I read actually list year.
I think there are a few kinks we can work out, easily to make it more possible for readers.
Booknblues wrote: "Robin P wrote: "Booknblues wrote: "Time TravelWhat if we could move through time and had a portal which would take us backwards and forwards through time. We are planning to do that with our Time..."
we might introduce precision tolerances for time travel:
1 year for the third millennium
half a decade for the twentieth century
decade for the XVIII and XIX centuries
25 years for the middle ages
50 years for the near antiquity
100 years for the BC events
1000 for prehistory
... or something like that, including a similar scale for future events
One more before the vote.GrabTag
This activity would be based on the top tag list for 2026 (the equivalent of the list below):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
The idea is pretty simple - - read/grab as many tags on the list that you can in the year, but there would be some parameters:
1. Each book would need to be tagged 5 times with the tag(s) in question.
2. A single book can cover up to 10 tags. These tags need to be specified in your challenge tracker before the book is read/reviewed.
3. Each month, people can nominate tags that aren't on the list of the top tags, and we will throw those into a randomizer and 5 additional "lesser used" tags will be available for capture too. These special tags count for double. i.e. if you read one of them, it counts as two.
4. Goal is to read the most tags by end of the year. If you read all the tags by year end, you get 30 participation points and a raffle entry. There will be participation points given for reading 25% and 50% of the tags as well.
Anita wrote: "One more before the vote.GrabTag
This activity would be based on the top tag list for 2026 (the equivalent of the list below):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/......"
It looks like I cannot view the spreadsheet unless I sign in with a google account. Is this normal behaviour? Because I really don't like Google sticking their nose into everything I do online.
Theresa, Theresa - ‘smut’ is on the top tags list 🤣Not quite sure how ‘reverse harem’ ends up being included, mind … I honestly think I’ve never come across a book in that category, lol.
Algernon (Darth Anyan) wrote: "Anita wrote: "One more before the vote.GrabTag
This activity would be based on the top tag list for 2026 (the equivalent of the list below):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/......"
So sorry, that was my fault. I just needed to change the security settings!
It's really just a list of the top 300 tags that I use to do the random selection each month of the tags for the vote.
KateNZ wrote: "Theresa, Theresa - ‘smut’ is on the top tags list 🤣Not quite sure how ‘reverse harem’ ends up being included, mind … I honestly think I’ve never come across a book in that category, lol."
Lol! 300 is a lot of tags, and I eliminate some that people use that don't fit our purpose (i.e. books I own_ and also years (because people had a lot of hatred for years as the tag).
I don't know what reverse harem is but there are 26,000 books on that shelf!
Am I understanding #2 correctly? A book can possibly have 10 of the top tags on GR's MP. You can read any one of those tags as long as you put it in your tracker?
Joanne wrote: "Am I understanding #2 correctly? A book can possibly have 10 of the top tags on GR's MP. You can read any one of those tags as long as you put it in your tracker?"You may use one book to claim up to 10 top tags. The book must be tagged at least 5 times with each tag you are claiming. The tags must be noted in your tracker first (not later on in the game).
I'm trying to make this more about strategy and not about reading 300 books lol.
So let's take an example book. If I read The Namesake, here's the first page of tags:
https://www.goodreads.com/work/shelve...
I could use this book to "grab" India, classics, Asian, female author, and 21st century. There might be even more from the top 300 tags that could be claimed by this book, but that's a sampling.
To get all the tags, plus the extras is going to take 30 books if you claim 10 tags with each read . . .that seems sufficient for a challenge so that slower and faster readers can all have fun!
KateNZ wrote: "Theresa, Theresa - ‘smut’ is on the top tags list 🤣Not quite sure how ‘reverse harem’ ends up being included, mind … I honestly think I’ve never come across a book in that category, lol."
🤣
So are slow burn' and 'sex'!
'reverse harem' needs some serious investigation.....
I like this one! It seems pretty straightforward. Plus smut!
KateNZ wrote: "Theresa, Theresa - ‘smut’ is on the top tags list 🤣Not quite sure how ‘reverse harem’ ends up being included, mind … I honestly think I’ve never come across a book in that category, lol."
Oh ICK. Reverse harem and bdsm are not for me, There are an awful lot of romance tropes, as well as very young topics in the list. Those weren’t in the grab bag we used last year in the steeplechase race. I would rather have the years instead.
I’m pretty sure I read nearly all of the tags in last year’s grab bag, and it was a lot of fun. It’s also a lot of work to search lists for books or tags. I don’t know if I have it in me to do it again with an even longer list.
If this one wins, I would recommend adding DNF back in. It’s a surprisingly easy tag. No matter what your favorite book is, I’ll bet someone else tagged it DNF. For instance, Harry Potter #1 has more than 700 DNF tags. Every popular book has its detractors.
I agree with you Nancy - ok to have a few romance-type tags but there are lots that are duplicates that Anita could edit out. We can trust our mods to get the list to a good and challenging variety without being unsavoury or too repetitive :) I like DNF too. If it didn’t make the initial list, we could always get it in via the additional tag selection - such a cool idea.
What surprises me is that if this is the list of top tags that Anita gives the randomizer each month, how few of those romance tags ever show up as an option!
Booknblues wrote: "NancyJ wrote: "I’ve only skimmed … so far rabbit hole and leap frog fit my reading style. I love to find books that are connected in some way, and I like to do deep dives once in a while. I already..."“ I don't remember if I said it in my description of Rabbit Hole, but I will definitely be eliciting ideas from members for Rabbit Hole.”
That’s perfect. Once I get digging, I can usually find some books on any topic that will make me happy. (I have a long list of birds, bees and bunnies books to prove it.
I was too late, but I was going to plant a seed with you and Anita about award winners or shortlisted books. I keep finding new awards I really like, such as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. This year I will pick 10-20 awards and read at least one shortlisted book from each of them (in any year). If there was a topic like that in this challenge, I’d be happy to hang out in a cozy warren for quite some time.
I was all about variety in the past, but I really enjoyed the slower pace and focus this year. I love the idea of doing some deep dives on some good topics next year.
Theresa wrote: "What surprises me is that if this is the list of top tags that Anita gives the randomizer each month, how few of those romance tags ever show up as an option!"They never came up on my searches either. The list might have changed a lot due to the activities and challenges of very large groups. I think she does a new search each year, before she starts editing. I think it might help to have a few volunteers to help with the editing. I would nominate Joy and Oliver (for the breadth and volume of their reading). They completed the full grab bag list last year. Between the two of them they understand the GR tags better than most of us, and they have complementary reading preferences.
(Sorry Joy and Lynda!) 🫢
Thanks, Anita, for some reason, my brain was not understanding the requirement. Makes more sense now-haha!
Play Book Tag
Books mentioned in this topic
Perestroika in Paris (other topics)Horse (other topics)
The Giver of Stars (other topics)
Silk Route Adventure: On Horseback in the Heart of Asia (other topics)
We have decided that our members will vote for one challenge from Anita's ideas and one challenge from Booknblues' ideas as we did last year.
Our goal is to get these challenges posted by November 10th or so, and at this point, we welcome questions!
I've found that questions have really helped us to finalize the specifics for each challenge and almost always raise some issue we have not considered!
Looking forward to the questions, but also hoping that each challenge has enough description that you will find it easy to determine which is your favorite.