STOP is a speedy general knowledge quiz game for at least two players but with no set upper limit. It's designed by Naia Hamasaki and published by Singa Games as part of their series of light games packaged like a light snack in a resealable pouch.
The core game follows a familiar pattern for quiz games: you turn over a Question card that establishes a category and a Letter card that shows a letter. Question categories are very broad - for example, 'Animal', 'Fictional Character', 'Verb', 'Found in a school' - and each of the 18 Question cards has two questions on it: the player who flips the card chooses between the two categories.
Everyone who has an answer in mind puts up their hand. Play goes round and/or back and forth with players giving answers. There's no dithering allowed: if any other player has a hand in the air, you have to answer in 5 seconds. Get an answer wrong (ie: rejected by the other players: the questions are all open ended and there's no answer sheet) and you take a penalty point. The game is won by the player with fewest penalty points at the end of 10 rounds.
The novelty in this quiz game is what gives it its name. There's a separate STOP deck and if you can't answer and if no other player has their hand up, you can call STOP and take a STOP card. These are effectively Chance cards. Of the deck of 15 STOP cards, three give you a free pass, allowing you to end the round without taking a penalty point, but a couple of cards immediately hit you with a penalty point. Other cards require you to answer the question using a different letter, with cards here using the five letters excluded from the ordinary Letters deck (K,Q, V, X, Z).
The STOP deck then is a second chance if you get stuck, so it's always going to be worth taking rather than just accepting a penalty point. That's fine if you're playing STOP as a children's game but you can equally play STOP as a party game for players of all ages and if you broaden the game in this way we reckon there ought to be a degree of risk in taking a STOP card. We play with a house rule that if you take a STOP card that offers an alternative letter and you are still unable to answer then you take two penalty points rather than one.