FLAMES is a classic pen-and-paper relationship game that reduces two names down to a single letter — F, L, A, M, E, or S — standing for Friends, Love, Affection, Marriage, Enemy, or Sibling. This calculator automates the traditional counting method instantly.
The two names are compared letter by letter, canceling out any letter that appears in both (removing one occurrence per match). The count of letters left over is then used to “count off and eliminate” through F, L, A, M, E, S repeatedly in a loop, the same way the traditional playground version works, until only one letter remains.
F stands for Friends, L for Love, A for Affection, M for Marriage, E for Enemy, and S for Sibling. It’s worth remembering this is a lighthearted game rooted in a simple letter-counting trick rather than any real predictive method — the fun is in the shared, well-known ritual of it, not in taking the result seriously.
No — swapping which name goes first and which goes second doesn’t change the result, since the letter-canceling and counting process treats both names symmetrically.
If all letters fully cancel out, there’s nothing left to count, and the calculator will indicate no result can be determined for that particular name pair.
Either works — the calculation only depends on the letters you type in, so you can try full names, nicknames, or both and compare the results for fun.
