Dichotomy
A cooperative word party for 3–7 players. One player is the Guesser each round; everyone else is a Clue-Giver. The table’s job is to get the Guesser onto the Target without anyone naming the Foil.
Setup
1.
Shuffle the word-card deck.
2.
Deal thirteen cards as the round deck. The rest stay aside.
The first Guesser is chosen at random and is marked Guesser in the player list so every seat can see who is guessing.
3.
The score pile starts empty.
Each word card holds five numbered Target / Foil pairs. Only one pair is in play each round.
A round
Reveal
The Guesser is blinded. The player to the Guesser’s left draws the top round-deck card and chooses which of the five pairs to play. Clue-Givers see only that Target | Foil pair.
Clue writing
Each Clue-Giver writes one single-word clue in private. The clue must not be the Target, the Foil, or a variant of either.
On this digital table, clues are written in turn rather than at the same moment. A Clue-Giver sees only their own slate while writing. Other players see that a clue has been submitted, not the word.
An empty submit is a timeout: that player contributes no clue.
Purge
When every Clue-Giver has submitted, matching clues and their variants cancel. The Guesser never sees cancelled clues, and never sees who wrote what, until the round is resolved.
Guess
The Guesser sees the surviving clues, still without authorship, and types a guess — or passes.
Target (or a variant of it)
The revealed card goes on the score pile.
The card is discarded, and the next round-deck card is discarded as a penalty.
Foil (or a variant of it)
Discard, round-deck penalty, and one card is removed from the score pile.
Empty piles skip their penalty. Matching is case-insensitive and trimmed; plurals and morphological variants count.
After the guess, the table pauses on a review of the round. Everyone can see the Target, the Foil, every clue (including cancelled ones, marked eliminated), who wrote them, and what the Guesser typed — or that they passed. Tap Continue when you have read the result.
The player who draws the next card (left of the new Guesser) may choose the next pair before every seat has confirmed. The recap stays up until that pair is locked; then clues reset and the Guesser is blinded again.
The Guesser token has already passed left, so the next drawer is seated and can act during the recap.
End of the game
The game ends when the round deck is empty and every seat has confirmed the last recap (or the last drawer had no card to pick). Rank is the size of the score pile:
After a guess
Once a round is resolved, the recap shows the Target, the Foil, every clue (including eliminated ones), who wrote them, and the Guesser’s actual word. The next pair is hidden again as soon as it is chosen.