How to play Say It Once

One person cannot see the word

Everybody else can, and writes a single word for them — at the same moment, and blind to what anybody else is writing.

One word each, once a round. That is the whole of the input, which is why it works when half the table is on a phone.

The cull, which is the whole game

Every clue that two or more of you wrote is struck out before the guesser sees anything, and nobody — including the people who wrote it — ever finds out what it said.

So the clue that points hardest at the word is the clue everybody else also thought of, and writing the best word is frequently how you lose the round.

One attempt, and passing is allowed

The guesser sees what survived and gets a single go. Passing costs the round and nothing more — no penalty card, no lost turn, no deficit to make up.

Five, eight or thirteen rounds, agreed in the lobby before the first card.

Questions people ask

Is anybody competing against anybody?

No. It is fully co-operative — one score for the table, no per-player column anywhere in it, and the room wins or does not. That is the reason it is on this shelf rather than a cleverer competitive word game.

How many people does the cull need to be funny?

Five or six. Enough that collisions are likely, few enough that the surviving clues still say something. With three the cull rarely bites; with eight there is sometimes nothing left to hand over.

Does anybody have to install anything to play Say It Once?

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 Say It Once?

3 to 8 — best with five or six. A room seats up to 12.

How long does a game of Say It Once take?

About 15 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.