Board Game Arena

Hi,
in one of my recent games one player influenced the game by using his own created list of all target words. He would influence other players like: "This cannot be their target word, because it's not on my list." He would then come up with the right word, because of the list. Do you consider this as cheating?

It does feel a bit cheaty, part of the fun is figuring out the word it might be, if I were told that my guess was impossible since its not on such and such a list then that wouldn't be fun.

I'd probably ask that player to refrain, or red thumb them so I wouldn't match with them again.

Thanks for your feedback. That‘s what I did with the red thumb. I was just asking myself, if my reaction was too harsh.

Glad to hear other opinions to this.

I don't consider this cheating at all. For those of us who play a lot, it's a natural part of the game. Knowing the keywords makes you a better player as you know what the words could be. I'd be fine to be red thumbed if people didn't want to play like that though.

I think as you play more, you naturally remember a lot of the key words and use that memory to aid you in the game. The only thing I would consider cheating is if you are actively checking a list, instead of just consulting your memory, while guessing.

It‘s not about knowing the keywords. Of course you gain an advantage by playing more and more. The user has written down the keywords over time in a list and he was actively checking the list during the game to gain an advantage for his team. From my point of view ot takes away the skill part that you bring to this game and reduce it to the minimum by actively having all the possible answers at hand, when the other team or even your team members don‘t have this.

If somebody would bring such a list to a gaming meeting, it would be weird, when one player would be checking the list all the time, while the others can‘t. It would take away a lot of the fun.

There are a dozen toxic meta-aspects. Knowing the list of potential words is one of them. It’s a literal form of “insider knowledge” that the game is built around avoiding. But there’s not a lot that can be done about it. Just don’t play with people that have more than 100 games or so.

Julian Joooo wrote: ↑24 July 2025, 03:35 I think as you play more, you naturally remember a lot of the key words and use that memory to aid you in the game. The only thing I would consider cheating is if you are actively checking a list, instead of just consulting your memory, while guessing.

Exactly my take. An "in-memory" list is fine, because one can never recall every keyword at a given time. Applying experience is how you improve at any time, and part of gaining experience in Decrypto is becoming more familiar with the possible keywords.

However, consulting a written down list compiled over hundreds of prior games? That's cheating.

I do understand the frustration less experienced players feel when they suggest that the keyword is X and I say "it can't be X because X is not a keyword", but in my opinion it's important to not tunnel down a path that's impossible. In such cases the actual keyword is often related to X, so it's always useful to make suggestions.