Dale Yu: Review of Triangulation

Triangulation

• Designer: Peter C. Hayward
• Publisher: Allplay
• Players: 3-8
• Age: 9+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link:  https://amzn.to/4fy6qDB
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Each round in Triangulation, you give three clues, trying to get your teammates to guess the secret answer using word association. The twist? Your opponents get to guess first, using the first two clues.  Can you be obscure enough so that they can’t suss it out, but make it perfectly clear for your team when they get all three clues?

The players split into two teams, each designating one player to be an Insider.  The Insiders place a Screen in front of them and the three clue boards.  In each round, the Insiders each get a Message Card and chooses one of the six options on the card as the message they wish to transmit to their teammates.  If you’re playing in a more casual way, you can even announce the category that you’ve chosen (Character, Media, Person, Location, Brand, Wildcard).  

The Insiders now think for a bit and then write down three clues – which can be any word or phrase so long as it doesn’t contain bits of the actual message in them.  I.e. Don’t use “hamburger” for a clue for “Burger King”.

The Insider that finishes first is the 1st Insider. When both Insiders are done, the 1st Insider’s clues are used first.  The opponents flip over any of the three clue cards and then try to guess the answer.  If they do not get it, they flip over another of the clue cards and guess again.  If they guess correctly, they score a point. 

If they do not, then the Insider’s teammates flip over the third and final clue and guess.  If they are correct, then their team scores a point. If they are wrong, then the opponents take the point.  Repeat the process for the slower Insider’s clues.  The game ends immediately when one team scores their 4th point.

The rules suggest that if the game is too difficult and/or fragile, you add in a variant rule where the opponents can only score a point if they are able to correctly guess the message after the Insider’s teammates fail.

My thoughts on the game

Peter Hayward is one of the most prolific word/party game designers out there, and this one poses an interesting challenge to the players… How do you come up with three clues to a word where any two together won’t give it away while still having enough connections with all three to lead your team to the right place?

It’s actually much harder than it seems, and in our experience, most points are stolen by the opposing team.  Sure, sometimes it’s luck – the other team might just flip over the two cards which are more important to the target than the third… but honestly, it’s just really hard to give good sets of clues here.  If you’ve got one of those people on your team, you’ll be in the driver’s seat…  But for most of us, it’s giving two clues that work and a third that is a total red herring and then hoping like heck that the other team chooses the bad clue.  

Well, the rules seem to realize this problem and they add in a variant to help the game if it becomes a bit fragile – and welp, guess what – the game actually is a bit fragile and might require such a rule.  While it is a fun and interesting activity to try to come up with the trio of clues, it falls a bit short in terms of being a game that we want to play around here.  Maybe if your group is a bit stronger into wordplay and crosswords (or cryptics) – this will work better for you

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4fy6qDB

0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Dale Yu: Review of French Toast

French Toast

• Designer: Peter C. Hayward
• Publisher: Allplay
• Players: 2-10
• Age: 6+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3R2nd8b 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In each game of French Toast, one player acts as the Alien, drawing a Secret Word that you and your friends have to guess. The catch? The Alien may only communicate by repeating your guesses back to you!  And they can only communicate by comparing things to the first thing they saw, French Toast!

Each time someone makes a guess, the Alien must decide whether that guess is “closer” to their Secret Word than the “closest” previous guess.

If the new guess is closer, the Alien repeats it back to you. If the new guess isn’t closer, the Alien repeats the closest previous guess instead. Keep making clever guesses to get closer and closer to the Secret Word until you can guess the Secret Word itself!

What makes one guess “closer” to the Secret Word than another? It’s completely up to the Toastmaster! They can use whatever criteria they think will help you guess the Secret Word – and hopefully the rest of you can figure it out!

You have only six rounds to guess the Secret Word, so make every guess count!

To start, the Alien draws a noun card (can be either Basic or Advanced) to determine the secret word.  Then the Alien takes 6 hint cards and chooses one, placing it along the hint track – telling the Humans how much that hint is similar or dissimilar to the noun on the card. The thirty second timer is flipped over and the first round begins as soon as the Alien says “French Toast” as the first guess of the round.

The Humans now can make guesses by blurting our words.  While the secret word is always a single word, Humans can use any word or phrase that encompasses a single idea.  The Alien then decides whether the new word is more like the secret word or not.  The Alien then either replies with the new guess or the current closest guess.  The Alien is allowed to use inflection and facial expressions in addition to the words, and the Alien is allowed to point at the hints.  This continues until the timer runs out or the correct word is guessed.

To start the next round, the Alien now draws 6 more Hint cards and chooses one to play.  It is also placed next to the hint track (and the previously played cards can be moved around).  Only one hint card is allowed in each of the six spaces.  The timer is again flipped and the process repeated. 

If the Humans can say the secret word before the end of the 6th Round, everyone wins.  Else, the Aliens leave the planet in disgust and the game ends in a loss.

My thoughts on the game

Again Allplay has given us a party word game desgined by Peter Hayward.  This is definitely the big theme of their summer releases!  This one is a frenetic game where the players are all shouting out answers and then listening to see what the Alien gives them back as an answer.

The players also should try to use their knowledge of what the Alien knows and likes because there really isn’t any rubric for the Alien to decide what is more similar or not.  This can be helpful for both the verbal answers as well as how to interpret the Hint cards.

Unlike a lot of other similar games, the only arbiter of right or wrong is the Alien – so there is no way to screw this up.  The other players just have to keep trying different words and trying to interpret the hints as best they can.

Our group has found the easy words to be well, a bit easy – usually getting to the answer in four rounds on average.  The harder words have been a really good challenge, and this makes a great filler when you’re between games or something to play as we wait for everyone to assemble for game night.

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3R2nd8b 

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor