We get it! It’s 3 p.m. Your third coffee wore off an hour ago, and the cursor’s just blinking at you, waiting for motivation that isn’t coming. Logging off is not an option, and you need a quick reset. Well, here are some fun things you can do at your desk, without getting a notice from your HR or IT department flagging your activity. You are typing a few words into the search bar you have already opened. Google’s engineers have spent two decades quietly hiding jokes, games, and one genuinely useful search trick inside the world’s most serious piece of software, and most people never stumble upon them. Well, that ends today.

Go for a spin

In the search bar, type ‘do a barrel roll’ and hit Enter. The whole results page does a full 360 in about a second flat. This may be the easiest one on the list, but still the most satisfying.

Get an arcade break

Now, in Google Images, type ‘Atari Breakout’ and, on a good day, your search results turn into the arcade classic itself. Think paddle, ball, and all, built from the very thumbnails you just searched. It’s one of Google’s more visually clever eggs. It’s also one of the flakier ones lately, so if it doesn’t fire on the first try, don’t assume you did something wrong.

Play Pac-Man

How about having some real fun? Type ‘Google Pac-Man’ and you’ll land on the fully playable version built for the game’s 30th anniversary. Expect ghosts, pellets, and more right where your search results usually sit! Sometimes it is pulled out of live search, so treat it as a bonus.

Go back to 1998

Now let’s take a walk down memory lane. How did Google look back in 1998? Well, you can experience it right now. Just type ‘Google in 1998’ in your search bar and hit Enter. Your results page will look like the time when it was launched: before ads and autocomplete. It’s like stepping into a time machine.

Askew

Maybe you need to look at things from a different angle. Slightly tilted? Search ‘askew’ or ‘tilt’ and the entire page leans slightly to the right, just enough to notice. This is subtle enough that half the people who try it assume their laptop has glitched! This trick works best on desktop, where the tilt actually has room to show.

Flip a coin

Wondering what to do next? Maybe quit this job? Or move on from the relationship. You don’t have to reach for a coin to help you make a decision. Search ‘flip a coin’, and Google will give you an instant, digital heads or tails. No app, no physical coin, and absolutely no excuse to keep agonising over that decision.

Roll a die

If the mid-afternoon blues have really got the best of you, roll a die. Search ‘roll a die’ or ‘Google dice’ and a six-sided die appears on command. You have the option to roll more than one at once. Maybe this is how you make the decision you’ve been avoiding all morning.

Find exact phrases

This trick may come in handy. Put your search terms in quotation marks, and Google will only surface pages containing that exact phrase, in that exact order, instead of loosely related results scattered across the internet.

Search specific sites

Say you want everything TOI has ever written about the World Cup, but you’re tired of wading through fan blogs and clickbait to find it. Type “site:” followed by a domain and your keyword, like site. timesofindia. indiatimes. com World Cup, and Google narrows its entire index down to that one website. This is really a shortcut, and one of the few on this list that your boss might actually appreciate you knowing!