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Say My: A Game

Turn any conversation about anything into a territory battle. Force your friends to say a word that only you know! Everyone is given a number of words. You cannot say your word(s), but your goal is to get others to say them. Be careful though! If they get you to say their word(s) first, you'll lose!

Example Play

For simplicity, imagine we are playing this game, just you and me. You get the word "suit" (but I don’t know this), and I get the word "bottle" (but you don’t know this).

You say "When was the last time we saw each other?"

I say "Girl, I don’t know. Maybe Amelia’s wedding?"

You say "Yeah! I loved the groomsmen ties. Where did you get yours?"

I say "Online. Amelia wanted everyone to have one. I loved everything about that wedding!"

You say "Sorry I spilled wine on you that night."

I say "Don’t worry, it was cheap wine, and my suit was a rental."

You say "Suit! Hahahahahaa! That’s my word. I win. You’re a loser! I get a point!"

Necessary Items

The only thing needed for this game is a suitable list of words and a way to secretly give people these words. If you have Codenames, the word cards there work quite well.

Suggested Rules

First, you assemble a group of people together. This can be played at a table or at a party or online or anywhere. Any time a group of people will have the opportunity to talk to each other, you can play "Say My"!

Everyone gets three cards/words and discards one that they don't like so that they have two words. They can't say these words, and their goal is to get other people to say these words.

Have a conversation or engage in the evening's activities as per-normal, but pay attention to which words people will and won't say!

If someone says your word, you get to keep the card as a point. If someone knows your word, they can tell you what your own word is and they get a point for guessing it.

When a word is said, the player that had that word will draw two cards, so that they have three cards in their hand, and then they will discard any one of those three cards.

If the game is on the side, it continues until the evening is over. If the game is played by itself, it's best to put on a timer (e.g. one hour). It's best to teach people this game in small groups. New players might find the game mentally exhausting, and it is recommended to limit playtime in this case and come back to try again another time.

Recommended House Rules

Here are a few observations from playing this game and house rules you may want to consider:

• People can get 1-3 cards/words or more each. Having fewer cards is easier to keep track of, but it can also make it too obvious when you are going for a specific word.
• When people get new cards, deal no extra cards or extra cards, to change the amount of choice people have.
• Instead of using cards to count points, you can tally them (or avoid keeping score). In large groups, keeping track of points lost instead of points game changes the dynamic (it makes the cost of getting fooled higher and the benefit of fooling others lower).
• This game encourages a lot of lying. In order to still have a productive conversation, you might suggest people not to lie more than normal or not to lie at all.
• Especially in small groups, whenever anyone guesses a word, you can give people the option to discard cards and get a new one.
• After someone finds or steps on a word, make everyone switch out to get new words.

Emergent Strategies

I would recommend trying this game out with a group of friends before reading these strategies because it’s a lot more fun to discover them yourselves, but here are a few notes from playing this game:

• You can bait people into thinking that your word is something that it isn’t. "What kind of computer do you have?" "Apple" "Oh, well I love sitting in the aisle seat of a plane." "Is your word ‘window’ or something?" "no :)"
• If you are sure what someone else’s word is, you can say a lot of synonyms for it, which is really aggravating.
• You can talk about anything you want and enjoy people’s rapt attention as they try to tease out what your words are.
• You can "Yes" ladder, but seeking a series of nouns.
• Opportunistically wait for someone to bring up a topic which is related to a word. They will be excited to hear you engage their topic (which is presumably related to their word) and may not notice if you push things towards your words.
• Remembering the words that other people use and only saying those words which have already been said. This avoids accidentally stepping on words.

History

As far as I know, this is an original game. I would love to know about existing or similar games.

If you’ve read recent articles on here or if you’ve talked to me recently, you’ll know I’ve kind of been obsessing about this idea of narrative walls and the world people build for themselves. This is a game that popped into my mind a few weeks ago which focuses on understanding that world and interpreting it within the confines of a specific framework. I’ve been toying with this for a few weeks now, but I finally have had enough chances/parties to make people play with me, and I was delighted that people other than me had fun. In fact, I am ecstatic they were better than me at it, so that I have room to grow! I’m thankful to all the people who have explored this with me and suggested rules or strategies, and I'm especially thankful to those people that will play with me in the future!