
The Mind: Most polarizing card game of the year? - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/08/the-mind-most-polarizing-card-game-of-the-year/
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jsnell
> Players are not allowed to talk and must instead utilize non-verbal cues
> (like delayed action) as their primary tools.

No, I don't believe that's the correct interpretation of the game. The rules
are pretty clear about all forms of signaling being forbidden, not just
verbal. The only communication the rules allow is saying "stop", after which
all players place their hands on the table and remove them at the same time to
resume the game.

Now, you might say that without non-verbal queues there is even less of a game
here than this article describes. And you'd be right. There is literally
nothing to "The Mind" except every player (explicitly or implicitly) counting
time at the same speed and synchronizing up either after a card play or a
"stop".

~~~
tom_usher
I think that's a little reductive - there is more to it in the same way that
there's more to poker than hoping you get dealt a good hand (I'm sure that's
opening a can of worms).

It's not a game designed purely for expert bluffers. Everyone I've played The
Mind with has their own tells and quirks - even when they know the rules
forbid it - they'll cringe at their hand, tentatively hold a card forward, or
lower it to the table. It's just fun to pick up on these and have a laugh
about them.

I'm sure there are people that will rules-lawyer the fun out of it, but with
the right crowd this is one of the games I've been pulling out most frequently
recently, and haven't heard a bad thing.

~~~
jsnell
I don't think it's reductive, and this is definitely not rules lawyering.
There is just no ambiguity here. The rules mention multiple times that there
are to be no secret signals or information sharing.

In addition to that there's a spoiler section printed upside down for people
to read after they've played the game, to explain how anyone could possibly
succeed at the task with no communication. And that section is not about
reading non-verbal queues. It's about the players perception of time getting
synchronized.

It's great that you're having fun playing a game with the components of The
Mind. But the game both you and the original article are describing is pretty
much diametrically opposed to the game that the designer intended it to be and
described in the rules.

~~~
empath75
Every game I’ve played is full of non intentional communication in addition to
timing and that’s part of the game play as far as I’m concerned. Even the way
you move your hand communicates something.

~~~
matte_black
Indeed, I think it’s impossible to have zero information at all unless players
aren’t even in the same room. There’s just too much meta information you can
feed off of.

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kibwen
Neat, though it sounds like this game could be trivially beaten by agreeing to
sleepsort ahead of time (if your propensity to solve a game outweighs your
desire to not be a killjoy, anyway). For a less trivial take on a cooperative
game that limits communication (which is essential for any cooperative game,
to prevent quarterbacking) I highly recommend Hanabi:
[https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/98778/hanabi](https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/98778/hanabi)

~~~
vichu
Seconding this. The first thing that came to my mind when reading this article
was Hanabi - which is a fantastic game.

There's also a number of fun papers out there about Hanabi:

Hanabi is NP-Complete, Even for Cheaters Who Look at Their Cards :
[http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2016/5864/pdf/4.pdf](http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2016/5864/pdf/4.pdf)

Playing Hanabi Near-Optimally:
[http://www.mi.parisdescartes.fr/~bouzy/publications/bouzy-
ha...](http://www.mi.parisdescartes.fr/~bouzy/publications/bouzy-
hanabi-2017.pdf) (Though maybe skip this one if you intend to play the game
for fun with friends)

~~~
komali2
PDF warning, both links

(Sorry, mobile cuts off the second half of the URL)

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guy_c
Can see the game in action here -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnIfCG2dga8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnIfCG2dga8)
their level 4 was nice.

~~~
OscarCunningham
They're passing a lot of information through movements and facial expressions.
That seems like a more fun version of the game than the game actually
described by the rules.

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anonyte
I find that "The Game" and its "Extreme"[1] version with event cards where one
of them is actually disallowing communication until covered by another card
more engaging and fun to play then "The mind". Its fun to see the emotional
rollercoaster that someone goes through when you put something on the pile
they said they are interested in.

[1] [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209325/game-
extreme](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209325/game-extreme)

edit: fixed name and added link

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webkike
So you can beat this game by using the "sleep sort" method: starting at minute
0, every minute play the card that has the same number as the current minute

~~~
arrrg
How is that beating anything? You play games to have a fun or engaging time,
counting seconds is extremely boring.

I and everyone we showed this game to had a lot of fun playing this game and
not by counting seconds. It‘s a nice, quick game to start out with …

~~~
webkike
You beat it because: thems the rules son. They decided, not me.

~~~
ratacat
The more interesting question in that case, is why play it at all, if you're
going to take all the life out of it only you demonstrate a hollow win.

~~~
quickthrower2
Why is it a hollow win? Does castling or forking in chess make it a hollow
win?

~~~
arrrg
What’s hollow or not is about context. Chess is very serious, The Minds is not
very serious.

If things are less serious and also more squishy when it comes to the rules
(despite the very absolute “no communication” rule I do think that some
talking in The Mind doesn’t immediately destroy the experience and if you find
a happy medium and approach with the group you are playing with it can even
enhance the experience) then I would generalize that it’s in general easier
for wins to be hollow, because there is more room to “cheat” in ways that ruin
the experience.

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edanm
A fun party game I've seen is similar: everyone sits in a circle, then we try
to count to 100 collectively. The catch: if two people say a number at the
same time, we have to start over.

This is surprisingly fun, at least with a large group. Of course it is easy to
game (just count sequentially), but if people are playing for fun, it's really
interesting.

~~~
pgwhalen
This is a classic warmup for an ensemble of actors in a play. We used to do it
with our eyes closed as well.

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netgusto
I think a simple method would be for each player to move its next card
linearily towards the stack, for a duration in seconds corresponding to the
difference between the stack and their card.

That way, the one with the lowest card reaches the stack first.

~~~
gboudrias
Apart from making the game no fun at all, that's just establishing a language
before the game to use during. It's still a language (or a form of explicit
communication) and as such is as forbidden as ASL.

~~~
chii
so as long as you don't explicitly establish that the speed with which you
move is the key, then it doesn't count if each player independently assume
that speed of movement is the key?

I think the game is fun, but for only a few rounds. A game needs to have
competition between players imho.

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catchmeifyoucan
Hanabi is very similar. It's a card game where we have to work together to
build card sets. Except the catch is that everyone else knows what cards we
have, but not us.

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njarboe
Discussion here of the rules to this game and the conflict between winning and
having fun brings up a constant dilemma when playing board games. Playing with
my own family, where we have similar values for what was fun and made up the
extra rules ourselves, most games could be easily made better with some rule
changes. The downside is when you want to play with someone else. Following
the rule book then is the default as "better" has many interpretations.

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thrifter
I haven't played The Mind (yet), but this card "game" uses non-verbal
responses to make a quick and surprisingly accurate psychoanalysis of the
respondent: [https://medium.com/@jasoncomely/be-honest-are-you-lying-
to-y...](https://medium.com/@jasoncomely/be-honest-are-you-lying-to-
yourself-727d86116e9b)

It's based on the word association experiments by Carl Jung, who later
published his findings as The Association Method.

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pdm55
Game in full
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1gmLPCK3t8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1gmLPCK3t8)

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yosito
Polarizing?

