Speed dating scoring sheet template

1. What a good score sheet captures

Participants fill it in between rounds, standing up, with a bad pen. Keep it to the things you need.

• The name of the person they met, or the number or table they sat at.
• The table or round, so you can check the sheet against your pairing list.
• A yes or no: would they like to meet this person again? Nothing in between.
• One line for notes, so they remember who was who the next morning.
• Their own name at the top, so you know whose answers they are.

2. What it should not capture

Every extra box slows people down and makes the sheet harder to process. Leave these off.

• Scores from one to ten. A scale makes people overthink, and it gives you nothing a yes or no does not.
• Phone numbers or social handles. Contact details are for people who both said yes, and you share them after the event.
• Anything about looks or other people in the room. Notes stay private, and they should be kind anyway.
• Long forms. If the sheet takes more than a few seconds per person, it will be rushed or skipped.

3. Collecting sheets without anyone seeing answers

A yes or no is private. People are honest only when nobody looks over their shoulder.

• Use one sheet per participant and hand them out face down. Ask people to keep the sheet to themselves while they write.
• Do not read answers aloud and do not let a participant see another's sheet.
• Collect the sheets at the end in a closed box or folder, and keep them away from the room.
• Tell people that only mutual yes answers are shared. This makes it easier to be honest.

4. Turning sheets into matches

Matching is a simple rule: two people match when each said yes about the other. The risk is not the rule. It is the number of small mistakes when you do it by hand.

• Go through each participant's yes answers and look for the same pair in the other person's sheet.
• Work with a second person if you can. One reads, one checks, and you catch each other's slips.
• Write the matches in a list and share only matches, never one-sided yes answers.
• Send the results the same day or the next morning. People lose interest quickly, and a late message feels cold.

5. Common mistakes

Most problems with paper sheets are small and avoidable.

• Names written too small or only a first name. Ask for a table number as well, so you can tell two people called Sam apart.
• Missing sheets. Count them before people leave.
• Matches shared with the wrong person. Check each pair twice before you send it.
• No notes. A sheet without notes makes the follow-up hard when people forget who was who.

6. When paper is enough, and when it is not

A paper sheet is a fine choice for a small, friendly event. It costs nothing and every participant understands it.

• Up to about twenty participants, one organizer with a calm second pair of eyes can match the sheets in under an hour.
• Past that, the work grows faster than the room does, and one slip means a wrong match goes to the wrong person.
• If you run events often, the hours spent on sheets add up. That is the point where moving the answers to phones starts to pay off.
• Whichever you pick, keep the same rule: only two yes answers make a match, and nobody sees an answer before you share the results.

7. Setting up the room for sheets

A few small things before the first round make the sheets work far better on the day.

• Print a few spare sheets and bring pens, with a few more than you think you need. Pens vanish.
• Give each participant a clipboard or a firm card to write on, so they can fill in the sheet standing up.
• Explain the sheet in one minute at the start: what to write, that yes means yes, and that answers stay private.
• Leave a short moment after each round for people to write. If you skip it, the sheet gets filled in at the end from memory.
• Number the tables clearly, so the table column on the sheet is easy to fill in.

The free template

A clean one-page sheet with 20 rows, a name and table column, a yes or no for each person, a line for notes and a space for your event name. It prints on one A4 page. Open it, choose print, or save it as a PDF from the print window.

Open the printable score sheet

What to decide now

• Paper sheets or answers on phones.
• The columns you will keep: name, table, yes or no, one line of notes.
• How you hand out and collect the sheets so answers stay private.
• Who checks the matches, and when you share them.
• What you do about no sheet, or a sheet that is hard to read.

Run it with Mingleround

Mingleround handles registration, check-in, pairings, the timer, private answers and the release of matches. Read more on the speed dating software page, or see the pricing. The first event of a new organization is free.