How to play Four Leaves

Everybody writes at once, and the fourth clue is the hard one

You lay out four cards in a ring and write one word linking each neighbouring pair. Everyone does this at the same moment, so the opening minutes are quiet rather than a queue.

Four clues sounds like four decisions and is not. The word you want for the top edge is usually the word you already spent on the left one, and the fourth takes longer than the first three together.

Then a fifth card goes in and the lot is shuffled

The clovers come up one at a time and the owner sits out. Five cards, four corners, four clue words in place — and one of those five was never in the clover at all. Only the owner knows which.

The board is one shared thing. Anybody can move a card, and moving one takes back everybody's agreement, so it goes down only when the table has stopped arguing.

A ring has no top, and that is the trap

Turn the whole clover round and it is the same answer, which is why writing the same word on two opposite edges hands the table two readings and a free guess.

The mirror image is not the same answer, and that is the difference the scoring turns on.

Questions people ask

What happens if we are short of people?

There are two bots, and they are two habits rather than two difficulties. Broad writes the obvious link, which you will understand immediately and which will fit three of the five cards. Precise writes the exact one, which says almost nothing until it lands and then fixes two cards absolutely. Neither is the easy one.

Is anybody ever out, or waiting?

Only the owner of the clover currently on the table, and only while it is being solved — which is the one part of the game they cannot help with anyway. Everything else, including all the writing, happens simultaneously.

Does anybody have to install anything to play Four Leaves?

No. It runs in the browser everyone already has open. One person opens a room, reads out the six-character code or pastes the link into the channel, and everyone else is at the table in a couple of seconds.

Do we need accounts?

No. There is no sign-up, no password and no email address anywhere in the flow. You pick a name when you sit down, and that is the whole of it.

How many people can play Four Leaves?

3 to 6 — best with four or five. A room seats up to 12.

How long does a game of Four Leaves take?

About 20 minutes, which is the length of a coffee break rather than the length of a games night. Nobody is the host in the sense of holding the controls, so a round finishes whether or not everyone is still looking at it.

Does it work over a video call?

That is what it is for. The game is on the screen and the talking is on the call — nobody has to describe a board to anybody, and the parts that must stay private stay on the server rather than being read out.