Do you have a litmus test question?
Not necessarily for dating - I'm thinking about general interactions with new people. (But if the dating bit applies, go for it.)
Is there a question you ask that gives you a sense of whether there might be friction between you two in the future, but which is innocuous enough that the other person doesn't feel interrogated here and now?
Sometimes that's all it takes, eh? π
Once, a friend of mine in Canada said one nice thing about someone's coat in a Tim Horton's line, to which the person said "Thanks, it was my mother's, but we don't talk anymore since she started making pacts with the Devil."
...
So...
That was a fun rest of the line for timbits.
π