Quick winning principles
- Know your operatives: literal tables need concrete clues; creative tables thrive on abstraction.
- Assassin-adjacent clusters are the #1 loss condition—map them before every clue.
- Clue:2 beats clue:4 when neutrals sit between your targets.
- Use zero clues to reset tempo when operatives are overheating.
Ideal strategy
- 1
Table culture read: first round probe with clue:2 on obvious pairs—operatives' stretch behavior reveals literal vs lateral thinkers.
- 2
Entropy clue design: partition your team's words into tight semantic clusters; a clue touching only your cards beats a clue of +1 that also hits neutral.
- 3
Assassin graph: map 2-hop neighbors of the black card before every clue; FRUIT:3 fails when APPLE is assassin.
- 4
Operative trust calibration: after one bad stretch, switch to clue:1 for two rounds—rebuild trust before another multi-hit.
- 5
Tempo denial: when opponents are one card from win, clue words overlapping their remaining cluster—even as neutral bait on your turn.
- 6
Zero clue meta: burn a turn confirming a link when one wrong guess loses the game.