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Comment by jsnell | Hacker News Reader

> Players are not allowed to talk and must instead utilize non-verbal cues (like delayed action) as their primary tools.

No, I don't believe that's the correct interpretation of the game. The rules are pretty clear about all forms of signaling being forbidden, not just verbal. The only communication the rules allow is saying "stop", after which all players place their hands on the table and remove them at the same time to resume the game.

Now, you might say that without non-verbal queues there is even less of a game here than this article describes. And you'd be right. There is literally nothing to "The Mind" except every player (explicitly or implicitly) counting time at the same speed and synchronizing up either after a card play or a "stop".

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I think that's a little reductive - there is more to it in the same way that there's more to poker than hoping you get dealt a good hand (I'm sure that's opening a can of worms).

It's not a game designed purely for expert bluffers. Everyone I've played The Mind with has their own tells and quirks - even when they know the rules forbid it - they'll cringe at their hand, tentatively hold a card forward, or lower it to the table. It's just fun to pick up on these and have a laugh about them.

I'm sure there are people that will rules-lawyer the fun out of it, but with the right crowd this is one of the games I've been pulling out most frequently recently, and haven't heard a bad thing.

I don't think it's reductive, and this is definitely not rules lawyering. There is just no ambiguity here. The rules mention multiple times that there are to be no secret signals or information sharing.

In addition to that there's a spoiler section printed upside down for people to read after they've played the game, to explain how anyone could possibly succeed at the task with no communication. And that section is not about reading non-verbal queues. It's about the players perception of time getting synchronized.

It's great that you're having fun playing a game with the components of The Mind. But the game both you and the original article are describing is pretty much diametrically opposed to the game that the designer intended it to be and described in the rules.

Fair enough! I'm intrigued to know your opinion of the game from what you've played of it. Do you enjoy the synchronization/counting aspect?

No, I don't. If someone insists on counting, it's like watching paint dry. It's a little bit more interesting if everyone is willing to wing it, but still not something I'd choose to play.

So I'm certainly not going to tell people that they should play by the rules as written. There's no game there. But perhaps this explains why the author of the original game perceived it as being polarizing. (But the problem is that the moment you transform this to a game about communicating over a limited channel, or to a game about reading tells, there are better options around.)

I guess it's like watching paint dry in 100 sec.

Every game I’ve played is full of non intentional communication in addition to timing and that’s part of the game play as far as I’m concerned. Even the way you move your hand communicates something.

Indeed, I think it’s impossible to have zero information at all unless players aren’t even in the same room. There’s just too much meta information you can feed off of.

I feel like this is the part the other comment or is either ignoring or not seeing. We’re not talking about non-verbal communication, like the hand signals of a 3rd base coach. Of course it’s forbidden to hold up fingers for the numbers on the card you have.

That rule doesn’t forbid your natural actions and reactions.

Secret signaling implies intent. Does cringing at a hand signal intent? Maybe, if the player intentionally does it, and has been warned before hand about doing it. But a regular new doing it automatically?

The (well-developed, with a lot of literature) precedent you want to look at is bidding systems in contract bridge, and the enforcement around them in tournament play.

This problem in bridge is what make playing it competitively (either in tournaments or for money) a bit frustrating. I still enjoy it and love to play the game, but at elevated stakes the possibility for partners to cheat by secret communication is too high for me to enjoy it. I even sometimes start to think about how my own normal behavior is illegally signaling to my partner. That is no fun.

> There is just no ambiguity here. The rules mention multiple times that there are to be no secret signals or information sharing.

But the way you’ve just explained it is ambiguous.

Do the rules prohibit intentional information sharing or just information sharing?

If the former, then (unintentional) information sharing is allowed and if the latter, then the game should be played using computer terminals to prevent physical and verbal tells.

I haven't played this game and don't intend to, since it seems dumb to me. But that's like asking, "Does the board game prohibit intentional cheating or just cheating?"

The English rules are here: http://middys.nsv.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/TheMind_GB.p...

There is no ambiguity. Don't share information. Worse, your line of thinking is not in the spirit of the game, ambiguous or not.

> Do the rules prohibit intentional information sharing or just information sharing?

Maybe you're just being silly, and if so I apologize for playing this straight, but how are you composing intentionally and unintentionally? If someone has the intention to (somehow) unintentionally share information, I don't see how that differs from intentionally sharing information.

It seems like what the rules actually mean is that you're not allowed to communicate except via the one form of communication that they've designated as "not communication".

The spoiler section also says you're not supposed to just count upward in seconds, which is strange because that's clearly both allowed and optimal. Maybe they mean that that's not the most fun way to play. But why would I want to play a game where fun was inversely correlated with the probability of winning?

I wonder what the optimal strategy is for the version where you're really not allowed to communicate (i.e. if no one plays a card immediately then you've communicated and therefore lost). Presumably you have to calculate based on the number of players and cards remaining how likely it is that you have the lowest card. You could also skip the later rounds by immediately playing a high card, at the cost of one life. I bet with enough practice you could win some games.

EDIT: On second thoughts, you're still communicating when you either play a card or not. So maybe that variant isn't so fun. It basically becomes everyone playing their lowest card as quickly as possible, and hoping that the lowest one lands first.

It is basically a game about timing but in practice people can’t help but give cues. Just as an example, if my only card is a 99 or 100 I can’t help but be somewhat disengaged with play and people are going to notice that and make assumptions about what I have.

It’s primarily a game about timing but it’s not the only element.

The problem is that they can't for it all forms of signalling. The game is just a frustrating semantic argument on what kinds of signals are allowed. I can't tap 3 times but can I move my card at 3cm per second?

Getting good at this game simply means getting good at one of the allowed forms of signalling.

So the idea is everyone count say twice a second, starting with the value of the exposed card, and when you get a match to a card you have, play it as fast a possible. If everyone counts at the same rate, you should win every time. I think this would be pretty easy to do if the group practiced out load for a while, but hard if you didn't.

I don’t see why the “synchronized play” strategy described in your last paragraph also doesn’t violate the no signaling of any kind rule. If I have a Two but no One, then by consciously not playing on the first second of play I am signaling something. Am I missing something?

I think the rules are just badly written. Every description I've read of people enjoying the game involves them signalling to each other using facial expressions. And it seems like it would actually be fun to play that way. I suspect it was how the game authors were playing it while play testing it. They just managed to write the rules in a way that didn't describe the game they had been playing.

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