Tips decrypto

Use the Team Chat to discuss with your team mate(s) what the other teams' secret words could be.

Giving Clues

Giving clues is the most fundamental part of the game. After all, guessing clues is all about reverse engineering the cluegiver's mind! Here's some tips on how to make clues good:

• The most important rule, that underlies all other principles, is to know what your goal is. Don't think of clues as standalone units: think about them in relation to the other clues that have been given and how it will affect your teammates giving clues. Don't be selfish! Prioritize giving clues that give your team freedom and less stress over making that funny combination of 3 words.

Oftentimes, the exact same clue could be brilliant or horrible for your team depending on when you make it. But to understand what makes a clue well-timed, it's important to understand what your goal is and what stage of the game you are in. There are three major types of clues:

• Vague Clues - These are clues that are meant to give opponents as little information about your word as possible, but tend to contribute to an obvious theme when paired together. An example is SOUND for VIOLIN.
• Specific Clues - These clues are specific to the word. In the short term, they are hard to guess, but heavily narrow down the word in the long-term. An example would be STRING for VIOLIN.
• Misleading Clues - These tend to also be specific words, which completely give them away once revealed but can trick the opponent into guessing another word. An example would be SMALLEST for VIOLIN.

As a general principle, use Vague Clues in the beginning, Specific Clues later in the game, and Misleading Clues when you're running out of options to stop interceptions.

Let's give an example. Let's say your words are OCTOPUS, COW, CALCULATOR, and STAR and you're the first person to move. Remember, at this stage of the game, your goal should be to give vague clues that give your team flexibility in the long-term.

You give the clue "EIGHT" for OCTOPUS, thinking that you can later mislead the opposing team with Calculator later.

In the short term, it may seem like a clever hint - after all, 8 seems nothing like octopus, right?

The problem is, you're not thinking about how your clue affects the game in the long-term. When your teammate tries to give a clue for that word next turn, what options do they have to not spoil the word? An otherwise vague word like "WATER" or "GRAB" would instantly give the word away to the other team - there are very few clues that work with the word 8 after all, and most of your opponents could easily spot the connection to octopus.

Let's now think of that same clue in another context. It's late in the game, and you and your opponent have one intercept. You just need to trick them once because you have a firm idea on their words. Your clues for OCTOPUS are GRAB, ROUND, and GOURMET, and while clues for CALCULATOR are BUTTON, TIMES, OFF, and BITS.

Giving the same clue - EIGHT - would be great in this circumstance! The opponent would mix up those words and give you just enough time to snag the win. The point is, what makes a clue good isn't about what word is the least related in the short term, but what clues give your teammates the flexibility to make their own clues without making them easily guessable.

• Give clues that are good, not clever.

While your team might hype you up for making a clue that's clever, what happens most of the time is that either your team doesn't understand them and you receive a Miscommunication, or you feed way too much information to the opposing team because you prioritized making clues that sounded clever over clues that effectively obfuscate your words. Even if clues seem vague, remember that trying to pair up clues for cleverness together reveals information about other words that you don't know.

• When it comes to misdirection, know which words your opponents have a general idea of, and which ones your opponents have a specific idea of.

It's almost impossible to misdirect your opponent on a word that they know exactly, because a word that they know that would also confuse them is very likely to confuse your own team. So the prime targets are words that your opponent have a general idea of, but don't know exactly. Suppose you have the words SNAKE and ECONOMICS, and your opponents already know your other words of BODY and HAMMER completely. You've clued TRADE, SYSTEM, and STEAL for ECONOMICS. Giving a vague clue for SNAKE might be a bad idea, because even if your opponents don't know what word it is, they can easily shoehorn it in if none of the other connections make sense. A clue like GREEN would be great here to mislead the opponents into thinking your word is MONEY. However, if you had a defeatist attitude and didn't think about how precisely your opponents were thinking about the words, you may have missed this opportunity.

Interceptions

• Don't be defeatist. Always make an attempt at getting them, even if it's early in the game and the words seem random.

The odds of you intercepting correctly if acting completely randomly is 1/24. If you get even one association correct, even if you aren't sure on it, the odds of getting the right combination drop to 1/6. Always playing for the intercept, over the course of many games, will give you them in the long run - you just have to make an effort.

Guessing Your Team's Clues

• Think about what your teammates are thinking of. Sometimes, there might be a clue that fits for multiple words. But remember - your teammates were thinking about the words too - and "flipping a coin" is a way to easily get undeserved black tokens. A solid line of thought is this: Would my cluegiver actually pick that word if he saw the alternatives?

For example, if SPIDER and EYE are your clues and your cluegiver hints BLACK, it's very possible the cluegiver missed the phrase "Black Eye", but they would almost never try to give the clue BLACK for eye when spider is on the board. It's not a 50/50, and people have common sense. Take advantage of this when thinking about your cluegiver's choices.