How to play Shades

One word, then two

The cue giver is dealt four squares, keeps one, and names it in a single word. Everybody else places a marker on the board where they think it is.

Then the giver gets two words, everyone places again, and the square is revealed.

Distance is the score

Three points for landing on the square, two for touching it, one for the ring beyond that. The giver takes a point for every marker in that zone, up to six — so a cue that gets everybody close is worth more than one that gets a single person exactly right.

The board is generated rather than printed: thirty columns of hue, sixteen rows from pale to deep.

A warning we would rather give than have you find out

This is a game of red against green played eight times across, and it does not work for a colour-blind player without help. There is a second board — blue to amber, readable with red-green colour blindness — that anybody at the table can switch to between rounds, and it makes the game playable.

It also makes it smaller. If somebody at your table has total colour blindness there is nothing here for them, and the shelf has twenty-seven other games on it.

Questions people ask

Does Shades work for a colour-blind player?

Partly, and we would rather say so plainly. There is a second board running blue to amber that is readable with red-green colour blindness, switchable by anybody between rounds — it makes the game playable and it makes it smaller. For total colour blindness there is nothing here, and we will not pretend otherwise.

Do I need good English to play?

No. A cue is one word, then two, and the thinking is about colour rather than vocabulary. It is the closest thing on this shelf to a game with no language in it at all, which is why it is the one we suggest for a mixed-nationality table.

Does anybody have to install anything to play Shades?

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 Shades?

3 to 10 — best with five or six. A room seats up to 12.

How long does a game of Shades 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.