Open the love calculator, type two names, and you get a percentage and a relationship such as Friends or Lovers. Behind that one tap sits FLAMES, a letter game that has decided schoolyard romances for decades. Here is exactly what it does.
What FLAMES stands for
FLAMES is an acronym for the six outcomes the game can land on:
- F for Friends
- L for Lovers
- A for Affection
- M for Marriage
- E for Enemies
- S for Siblings
The whole game is a way of striking out five of those six words until one is left. That survivor is your result.
Step one: cancel the shared letters
Write the two names out, side by side and in lower case. Then go through the first name letter by letter. Each time a letter also appears in the second name, cross out both copies, one for one.
Take Alex and Jamie. The letter a shows up in both, so it goes. The letter e shows up in both, so it goes too. Keep going until nothing else matches. Count the letters that are still standing across both names. That total is the number FLAMES runs on.
Because you are cancelling letters the two names have in common, the order does not matter. Alex and Jamie leaves the same letters as Jamie and Alex, which is why the calculator gives you the same answer whichever box you type each name into.
Step two: count around the word
Now write out F, L, A, M, E, S. Take the number you just counted and count that many letters along the row, looping back to the start when you reach the end. Strike out the letter you land on. Start counting again from the next letter, land on another, strike it out. Repeat until a single letter is left.
If you counted eight leftover letters, for example, you count eight along, cross one out, and carry on from there. It is the same counting-out rhythm as “eeny, meeny, miny, moe”, just around six words instead of a handful of children. The last word standing is the relationship the calculator shows you.
Where the percentage comes from
The relationship is only half the fun, so the calculator adds a score. It tallies how many times each letter of the word “loves” turns up across both names, lines those tallies up as a number, then folds that number in on itself, adding the outer digits together and moving inward until two digits remain. That pair is your percentage.
It is a bit of numerical theatre, but it is built entirely from the letters, so it behaves like the rest of the game: the same two names always fold to the same score.
Why the answer never changes
Nothing here rolls a dice. Every step reads the letters you typed and follows a fixed set of rules, so the tool is deterministic. Put in the same two names tomorrow, next week or on a different device and you will get the same percentage and the same FLAMES label every time. That is what makes it worth sharing: your friend can check your working and land on the exact same result.
Playing it on paper
You do not need a screen for FLAMES. A scrap of paper and a pen will do:
- Write both names and cross out the shared letters.
- Count what is left.
- Write F L A M E S and count that number round the word, striking out letters until one remains.
The calculator just does the crossing-out and counting instantly, and adds the percentage on top. It is the same game your parents probably played in the back of a school book.
Take it in good humour
A low score is not a verdict and a high one is not a promise. FLAMES has no idea who you are; it only knows which letters you share. That is the joke, and it is why the game has lasted. Run your name against a crush, a best friend or a favourite film character, laugh at whatever comes up, and try another pair.
