Alibis

In Alibis we are detectives working together to work out who committed the heinous crime of… well, that’s never made clear. But someone is definitely guilty, and we just need to find out who.

In the box are 14 Suspect boards that get laid out on the table (-possibly removing some suspects, depending on how many players you have) and assigned random words from a deck of Word cards to them. Each player is dealt two Suspect cards that match two of the boards: you can look at your own and know already that this pair are innocent. In fact everyone’s pairs are innocent: but they can’t share which suspects they’ve been dealt. One card is left over: and that one is the criminal. Now we need to work out who it is.

Everyone looks at the two random words assigned to the suspect boards: your job is to write down a single word that you hope will clue in the other players as to which two suspect cards you have. For example if your words are Plane and Beach, you might clue holiday. One by one, everyone reveals their clues and all players mark down on their personal Deduction boards – see pics above – which suspects they think each player has by deducing their clues. You may find your mind changes at certain junctures; possibly not.

After everyone’s revealed their clues, everyone then reveals their two suspects. The goal is to reduce the Heat on you all (in the form of tokens) – you begin with a certain amount of Heat and as long as at least one player guessed x player’s pair correctly, you can remove one Heat. For each player who correctly deduced who the criminal is – ie the leftover card – you can remove three heat. There are three rounds total – suspects and shuffled and redealed for each round and new words assigned to the suspects. If you collectively remove all the heat by the end of the third round: you win!