Five dice rolled in secret, one running bid on the table, and a single question every turn, raise the bluff or call it.
Everyone rolls five hidden dice. On your turn you either raise the standing bid, a claim about how many of a given face are on the whole table, or call 'Liar' on the previous bidder. Ones are wild and count toward any face.
When someone calls Liar, all dice are revealed and the true count is compared to the bid. If the bid holds, the caller loses a die; if it was a bluff, the bidder loses one. Lose all your dice and you're out, the last cup standing wins.
Liar's dice is not one game but a family, and the family is old: it originated in the 15th century as a bluffing game called Dudo, and spread from there through Latin America and Europe.
The split that matters is between "single hand" and "common hand" play. In the first, every player has their own set of dice and bids on what the whole table must be holding, visible and hidden together. In the second there is one set, passed around, and the bid describes the dice sitting in front of the bidder after re-rolls.
Its commercial afterlife is substantial — the variant published as Call My Bluff took the Spiel des Jahres in 1993 — but the mechanism has never needed a publisher. Everything rests on a single question asked of the previous bid: is that true, and is it worth calling?
Liar's Dice is a traditional bluffing dice game of hidden information and probability, where reading your opponents matters as much as the roll. This is an original, free browser version with solo, daily, and online play, ready instantly with no download or sign-up.