Triangulation

Triangulation is a clever word association party game, ideally played between two teams of two to four players, tho' there are rules for a three-player version and there's nothing stopping you playing the game with much larger teams of players, just provided everyone has good sight of the clues. The game is designed by Peter C Hayward, with art by Kwanchai Moriya, and it's published by Allplay.

Each round, one player from each team is the 'Insider' who takes a card naming six different people and/or place names. They choose one for their team to guess and they write down three clues to that answer. The cards with the Insiders' clues are all placed face down. The twist in Triangulation is that the other team get to see two of the three clues first and if they can correctly get the answer from just those clues then they steal the point. Only if they fail to guess correctly does the Insider's own team get to have their guess.

This is a game then where you need to come up with a combination of three words that, taken together, point clearly to the answer but where any two of the clues won't give enough information to pinpoint the correct answer. One great example from our plays at Board's Eye View was white, blue and Europe: no two of those clue words would help the opposing team to the answer Greece. As with Codenames (CGE), the clue givers need to take a few moments to come up with their clues, but Triangulation is brisker and with less downtime than Codenames, not least because both teams are setting their clues at the same time. The game is won by the first team to score 4 points, so you can expect to have a winner in around 15 minutes.

Unlike most other word and word association games - for example, Just One (Repos Production) and So Clover (Repos Production) - the words on the card are all proper nouns. Just be warned tho' that they lean heavily into popular culture so if you're playing with multi-generational groups Insiders will need to be sure to choose an option that will be within the exprience of the members of their team.

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