Jibber Jabble

• Designer: Cassie Sikes
• Publisher: Allplay
• Players: 3-10
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Your goal each round is to convey a secret word to the round’s guesser. You and your team gets to spell three words in order to do that.

Players spell one letter each. The catch? They aren’t allowed to discuss what clue they’re trying to spell. The first time you have a perfect clue in mind, but the person next to you says a letter you weren’t expecting at all… well, that’s Jibber Jabble.

Jibber Jabble is a cooperative game where one player is the guesser and the rest of the team tries to get that person to guess the secret word for the round.  To start, the guesser draws a word card, and without looking at it, shows it to the other players.  Someone chooses a number between 1 and 6 to set the secret word for the round.  

Then, starting with the player to the left of the guesser, that player says a single letter out loud, starting to spell out a word.  The next player then adds another letter, continuing to try to spell out a clue.  This goes on around the table until 3 clues are spelled out.  The Guesser is simply skipped while the clues are being spelled out.

At any point, the player whose turn it is can stay “STOP” to end the current clue and then give the first letter of the next clue.  STOP can be said because the current player feels the clue is complete, or if it has descended into nonsense, simply to start anew.

The clue givers may not communicate with each other at all.  The only allowed communications are saying “Jibber” to indicate that you understand what is going on and “Jabble” which means that you are confused.

After three clues have been spelled out, the Guesser gets a single chance to guess the secret word.  If correct, keep the word card as a point.  Rotate the Guesser role and repeat this for a total of six rounds.  At the end of the sixth round, the total number of correct guesses is the score for the team.

My thoughts on the game

This was one of the games that Allplay was pushing hard at Gen Con – they even had a dedicated event with some celebrities up on stage playing the game.  Jibber Jabble is a fun party game that has elicited all sorts of laughs every time that we’ve played.  It honestly reminds me a lot of Inspeaquence, one of my all time favorite party/word games.

Here, the mirth comes from the unexpected words that can develop as they are spelled out one letter at a time.  There are plenty of times when things happen quickly because everyone is on the same page.  There are others that just work out – say the secret word is “red” and the first player starts with a C to spell Crimson.  Somehow, the word turns out to be cranberry, and while not the same, it’s probably good enough.  Then, there are those words that just go so far off the rails that people burst out laughing when they hear the explanation!

For me, the one thing that I wish the game had was a bit of time pressure.  There can be times where the game grinds to a halt as a super confused player has to spend a bit thinking about what word he/she can spell with the letters they have been given, and everyone else just has to wait around until the next letter is given.  (In Inspeaquence, the team gives one WORD at a time to make a sentence to describe a secret word – but there is a timer on the round – and the time pressure leads to such hilarity, especially when brains short circuit having to think fast on their feet).

Despite that quibble, the game has been a bunch of fun.  We have made a modification to let the guesser have a dry erase board to track the letters.  The rules allow the Guesser to ask for the letters to be repeated, but it seems so much easier just to let them write it down (especially because on words that have gone off the rails, sometimes the team doesn’t even quite remember!)

It’s not my favorite in the genre, but it’s close.  It has the advantage of being portable and having up-to-date clues that are not mired in British idioms – so it’s going to get lots of play when we’re looking for this sort of game.  Definitely something to have around for our family holiday get togethers!

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, Jim B
• Neutral.
• Not for me… John P