Cancel out
Cafécafes
The accent goes, the plural comes back to the singular.
Party game, 3 to 8 players
Good idea. Too good. Gone.
One person guesses. Everybody else writes a word to help them — one, two or three, the table decides. Then the phone blows up the duplicates: two people who had the same idea just wiped it out twice.
One phone, flat on the table. No second screen.
PASS IT TO
PINK
Pick the phone up and tap the screen.
A real round
Look at what survives.
Three people, two clues each, pointing at the word in the middle. Yellow wrote the same idea twice and just cancelled themselves out: the phone does not look at who wrote it, it looks at what is written.
The word to point atBEACH
- sandstruck out
- sandsstruck out
- seastanding
- parasolstanding
- shellstanding
- towelstanding
That’s what’s left. Your turn.
The loop
Three moves, and the phone does the rest.
Nobody counts, nobody referees. The phone says who to pass it to, and it settles everything by itself when it comes back to the middle.
One colour looks away
The phone picks who guesses. That person stops looking at the screen. Everyone else sees the mystery word for a few seconds, then it is gone.
The phone goes round
It says PASS IT TO PINK in very large letters. Pink picks it up, types their clues — one, two or three, whatever the table asked for — and puts the phone back in the middle. They saw nothing, and nobody will see their words until the round ends.
Duplicates blow up
Face up in the middle, the phone shows the clues and tears up the ones that repeat. The guesser reads what is left and says one thing, or passes.
The only rule that matters
What the phone calls “the same word”.
It flattens the words before comparing them: lower case, no accents, no punctuation, the plural counting as the singular, and -e, -es and -er counting as one. Nothing else. No synonyms, no model deciding that two words mean the same thing.
Cancel out
bakebaker
A word ending in -e is folded as if it were a verb.
Both stand
portporte
The rule adds the -r, it does not strip the -e.
Both stand
dogpuppy
Two close words stay two words. No synonym is ever guessed.
The cost is owned up to: a noun ending in -e is folded like a verb, so bake and baker cancel each other. The alternative is a dictionary, and nobody at the table can predict a dictionary. Predictable beats clever.
The score
Thirteen words, and a double penalty.
The guesser says one thing out loud, or passes. What they pick does not cost the same.
The word is won. On to the next one.
The word is lost, and the next one goes in the bin with it.
The word is lost, and that is all.
That is what makes a wrong answer cost more than no answer — and why a table that is afraid to pass ends up at seven out of thirteen.
What the table sets
One clue each, or three.
Before you start, the table says how many clues each person writes. It changes no rule — only how much the guesser gets, and how many chances there are to land on your neighbour’s word.
- 1 clue
The game as it has always been played. Dry and quick.
- 2 clues
What saves a three-player game: four clues instead of two.
- 3 clues
At eight players, twenty-one clues to read out. Clear the evening.
Writing the same idea twice is cancelling yourself out: the phone does not look at who wrote it, it looks at what is written.
What the table picks
What are we playing on tonight?
Five word lists. They change no rule — only what comes out of the deck, and therefore what everybody thinks of at the same moment.
General
Everything, and where a phone that has never played starts.
Sport
The pitch, the kit, the moves.
Holidays
What you pack and what you find there.
Cooking
What gets eaten and what it is made with.
Nature
What grows, what flies, what flows.
The lists are in French. The game itself speaks your phone’s language; the words come out of those five lists.
End of the evening
The phone hands out the titles.
A co-op game finishes on a number nobody is responsible for. The titles are the ending: they give the evening a culprit, a hero and a running joke — each with its number, checkable, the list of thirteen words one tap away.
The Cliché
Most clues struck out. You write what everyone writes.
The Visionary
Never struck out, never any use either. Nobody followed.
The Lone Wolf
Your clue was standing when the word landed. And never struck out.
The Compass
Most words found. When do you get the phone back?
The Jinx
Most words wrong. And each one took another down with it.
The Twins
The pair that cancelled each other most often. The only title with two names on it.
What else you need
Nothing. That is the point.
One phone
It goes from hand to hand and back to the middle. Nobody gets theirs out, nobody scans anything.
No account
No sign-up, no mandatory nickname, no email. A colour is enough to name you.
Airplane mode
No network request, not even on first launch. The game works on a train, in a basement, up a mountain.
Nothing leaves on its own
The words you type stay in the phone and vanish with the game. At the end the game offers a poster to send — you see it before it goes, and nothing else ever leaves.
In figures
What it takes to start.
3 to 8players around the table
1phone, in the middle
13words per game
1 to 3clues per person
5word lists
≈ 15 mina whole game
0accounts to create
0network requests
The phone is ready
Put it in the middle. Off you go.
Nothing to install, nothing to create, nothing to send. Open the page, say who is playing, and pass the phone around.
Play nowplay.tipzzle.com