Decipher

Decipher is a decryption game that crosses Hangman with Mastermind: one player makes a word, and the others must work out what the word is.

The box forms a kind of console, with the puzzle-maker sitting one side and the word-seekers on the other. Before play commences, the puzzle-maker constructs a 3, 4, 5 or 6 letter word using letter tiles supplied in the box. Each letter is made up of two or more letter pieces: red and yellow straights, and blue and green curves – each letter is displayed on each side of the box as a handy reference. The puzzle-maker takes as many pieces as their entire word uses and then the game begins, with the puzzle-maker handing out the pieces one at a time.

For each piece the word-seekers receive, they have to guess where it features in the hidden word. For instance, if the word was ROCK then the blue curvy piece would feature twice in the second letter (making the O) and once in the third letter (making the C). If they guess the first letter in our example, the blue piece doesn’t belong there. The puzzle-maker will receive a point for this wrong guess, but on the other hand, the seekers now have additional information, and can eliminate several potential letters as the start of the word. As more pieces come out, this narrowing of possibilities can prompt guesses from the seekers: each seeker can use guessing tokens to  guess up to three times (it doesn’t have to be their turn), though a wrong guess is more points for the puzzle-maker! When the puzzle-maker has only three letter pieces left, they begin receiving bonus tokens for every unguessed turn, as time starts to run out for the seekers…

The puzzle-maker gets a point for each wrong letter guess, and two points for each wrong word guess. The seekers receive 2 points for every guess token they still have, and whoever deciphered the word gets the 5pt decipher token plus any bonus tokens not already claimed by the puzzler. Once every player has had a turn being the puzzler, scores are tallied.