Board Game Arena

Curious what the consensus is on some things we house ruled locally.

1) Unrelated phrases: “judge Parthenon dash Mercury potato dishwasher”, in which only one word is intended to be meaningful. (We allowed, because it is as likely to backfire as succeed, in practice, and the team’s guesser has as much information as the other team. But it’s kind of obnoxious.)

2) Sabotage rounds: a round in which the clue giver intentionally creates three unrelated concepts that have no relation to anything, fully expecting his/her partner to miss, because they’ll be pushed onto the pile for the correct words anyway, causing confusion among the opponents. (Disallowed, because the fuzziness of “any of these clues can be a red herring” just is irritating and against the spirit of the game. If pressed, we expected players to have a rational explanation why a clue was expected to work, and that it WAS expected to work.)

3) Clues to homonyms or similar spellings (this came up for “desert/dessert”, “nose/knows”, and “metal/medal”): the rules prevent using homonyms, and that clues must be towards the “meaning of the words” (thus we disallowed, but the difference between honest mistake/confusion and malice is hard to tell sometimes.)

4) Differential Equation clues — clues that lead to other clues which then lead to the meaning of the words. Notably, “knight” to “white” which led to “winter”. (We disallowed, because the permutations become unreasonable quickly, and it seems against the spirit of the rules.)

Curious what yall prefer.

I'm already confused !

1) I personally think this is actually too powerful and boring
You give a "A or B or C" with only one that makes sense.
I fear that if you allow this, it can quickly become all clues because it's quite easy to make such clues.

But I do allow idioms where you don't know whether the key is in the words or in the meaning.
IRL I have used "silence, on tourne" (something like "Silence, Action!" but literally "silence, we turn"). That cue was for "Planets"

2) That seems against the spirit but the cost is very high. I'm not sure it's worth a rule.
There are words that become red herrings in practice anyway.
And we know of that risk when the opponent doesn't find the answer.

3) That's in the official rules.
The clue can possibly act both ways and while the opponent can and should ask how the clue is spelled, I would allow a clue like "(K)Night, spelled however you like".
What is forbidden in the rules is to say "Warrior" if the word on the card is "Night". There must be a relation of meaning between what you say and the word to guess.

But yeah, you could be forgiven for thinking that the "Knight bus" in harry potter is the "Night Bus" (we see it at night and without any knight on it) and therefore give "bus" as a clue for "Night". You could even allow it on the ground that you expect other people to think that it is the "night bus" which creates a link of meaning in the mind of people...

4) Some people will elaborate on previous clues and get further and further away from the original word.
I think that it should be disallowed because you can very quickly get in a situation where you don't have all the information that was given.

One would have to be extremely pedant about not allowing the coder to give any explanation at all, including mimics about his clues even after the team has made it's guess because those mimics or explanation would then become private information for the next clues.

So I would not allow it but the boundary is not clear.
Once you team understands, for instance, that you make clues that refer to songs with a word in that song that is the word to guess or very close, you can get further and further away doing that if you are doing it often enough. Enough that you could say "Thriller" or even "Horror" for Neighbor because the song Thriller has the word "neighborhood" in it..

SirRhyno wrote: ↑14 September 2025, 04:43 1) Unrelated phrases: “judge Parthenon dash Mercury potato dishwasher”, in which only one word is intended to be meaningful. (We allowed, because it is as likely to backfire as succeed, in practice, and the team’s guesser has as much information as the other team. But it’s kind of obnoxious.)

Technically legal but not very fun.

SirRhyno wrote: ↑14 September 2025, 04:43 2) Sabotage rounds: a round in which the clue giver intentionally creates three unrelated concepts that have no relation to anything, fully expecting his/her partner to miss, because they’ll be pushed onto the pile for the correct words anyway, causing confusion among the opponents. (Disallowed, because the fuzziness of “any of these clues can be a red herring” just is irritating and against the spirit of the game. If pressed, we expected players to have a rational explanation why a clue was expected to work, and that it WAS expected to work.)

I've thought about this strategy before, and while it may technically be legal, as you say it's not fun and not in the spirit of the game.

SirRhyno wrote: ↑14 September 2025, 04:43 3) Clues to homonyms or similar spellings (this came up for “desert/dessert”, “nose/knows”, and “metal/medal”): the rules prevent using homonyms, and that clues must be towards the “meaning of the words” (thus we disallowed, but the difference between honest mistake/confusion and malice is hard to tell sometimes.)

Illegal. My in-person friend group gives clues like these. One example I remember is they clued "PAIN" for "WINDOW", using the PAIN/PANE homonym. I wanted to call it out but refrained. It's a casual group and there's no point being "that player" and spoiling the game. Another even more obnoxious one is the clue "DENIAL" (homonym of The Nile) for "EGYPT".

SirRhyno wrote: ↑14 September 2025, 04:43 4) Differential Equation clues — clues that lead to other clues which then lead to the meaning of the words. Notably, “knight” to “white” which led to “winter”. (We disallowed, because the permutations become unreasonable quickly, and it seems against the spirit of the rules.)

Clues like this are fairly common. Legal but risky. If planned carefully it can work out really well, but more often than not it backfires. When guessing I always make the simplest connections from clues to words. In general if there's several steps to connect a clue to a keyword, I consider it unintentional and reject it over a more direct (one-step) link, even if that link is spurious.

Another issue with multi-step clues is that it's impossible for the opposing team to figure out unless it's a known meta. And if it is a known meta then the complexity it adds to solving clues could take away from the fun.