Medium

Medium is a game of lateral-thinking and word-connection where you join two distinct teams – one with both your immediate neighbours – and teams compete for points by being the best mediums.

The mediumship is really less mind-reading and more connection/perception: everyone has a hand of Word cards with a single word on them, and teams take turns playing a card each and then finding – or trying to find – a word that connects with both of them. If you’re to my left and you play the word Summer, I might play the word Zoo. After a bit of thinking time – how long really depends on the patience of the other players – we both count down three, two, one… and say our connecting words: I say Safari, hoping you will too… if you do, we score points! If you don’t, we get a second turn, now looking for the connecting word for our guesses instead: I said Safari, you said Ice Cream – what were you thinking? – so now we count down three, two, one…. and say a new word each, hoping to say the same word and claim some (lesser) points. If that fails, we get one more chance to connect the latest guesses (the rewards for a third guess are even more paltry, however!) before we draw new cards and play moves on. It’s often the case that players don’t connect, although it’s interesting to see how people make different associative connections.

Seeded in the deck are three Crystal ball cards – when the third one is drawn, the current round will be the last before scores are totalled.

There’s also a couple of additional cards in the deck that allow for a bit of involvement for the non-active players; not needed on a first play but helpful to keep things interesting on subsequent visits.