About us
FLAMES Calculator is a small, single-purpose site. You give it two names, it plays theFLAMES game with them, and it tells you what the letters say. That is the whole thing.
What FLAMES is
FLAMES is a paper and pencil game that has been played in Indian classrooms for generations. You write down two names , cross out the letters they have in common , count what 's left , and then count that number around the six letters F-L-A-M-E-S -- Friends ,Lovers, Affection, Marriage, Enemies, Siblings - knocking out one each round until only one letter is left.
There is no single inventor. There is no rulebook. It spread word of mouth and that’s why there are so many variations. This site plays the most popular version.
Why we built it
Most online versions of this game are slow, full of adverts or want you to sign up before they'll tell you anything. That felt like a lot of friction for a game that originally asked for nothing but the back of a notebook.
So this one is built around a few deliberate choices:
- It is fast. The site is a set of static pages with almost no JavaScript. Fonts are served from our own domain rather than fetched from a third party.
- It is private. The calculation runs entirely inside your browser. The names you type are never sent to us, and we do not have a database to put them in.
- It is free and open. No account, no sign-up, no paywall, and every result shows its own working so you can check the maths yourself.
A word on taking it seriously
FLAMES is a letter counting game. It has absolutely no predictive power and tells us nothing about any real relationship between two people. The fun is in the reaction you get when you send the result off to someone. Please enjoy it in that spirit, and don’t make any real decisions based on what it tells you.
Get in touch
Found a bug, spotted a mistake, or want to suggest something? The contact page has the details.