The reason I asked about the homophones is because we encountered one in my last game and I wasn't sure if it was legal or not (it didn't ultimately matter). In this case, 'balm' was used to also mean 'bomb', though it may have been unintentional. Earlier ITT discussion of this rule circulated a bit, using Pitt/pit as an example, but an official conclusion was never reached.

I am ok with it too.. FWIW... it makes it kind of fun and people wont be as worried about they can or cant say... And, I agree that spurs et al can be entertaining. Dont want to curb that....

Spurs and I (mainly spurs) decided to push the envelope in this turbo.



I think its fine until you give specific cluing instructions to the spymaster, which spurs does a number of times. It was all in good fun though.

My guess would be EB was going for a connection between bath and balm as soothing things.

I don't think he'd try for a straight-up sound alike clue. He shouldn't expect that to work, because it wouldn't be legal. Clues must be related by meaning.

If he was using "balm" to clue for the actual word "bomb" it would be illegal for sure

That was one of the more entertaining games I've seen and I think it's a good argument for keeping it up until a certain limit (basically what Carl said) in the game, just because it's fun and keeps people wanting to play.

And yeah spymastering is fun but not being able to talk beyond clues and refereeing feels lonely and that would be the consequence of a totally unambiguous antispew rule. Like I don't want to chatter in a turbo but I want to be able to say ty for updating the list (oh ya ty insanity you saved my bacon) or laugh if the opposing spymaster makes a harmless joke.

I get the advantage of consistent rules especially after having read the previous games, I think the rules around cluing are currently very good. But this is something I feel like overpolicing might make it a bit boring as long as people re being fair.

On homophones: in written form they feel 'wrong' since they have nothing to do with the meaning when you can see the spelling and that's an almost inherent difference in this format, but I don't think they are gamebreaking for a number of reasons so I don't mind either way. Most of them seem covered by the rhyming rule and the ones that aren't seem to be covered by the target the meaning rule.

A side note - Am I the only one who thinks spymastering is ~10% harder in the table top version? I find it more difficult to see what I should be cluing for and what I shouldn't.

I did think it was unintentional, that he may have thought it was bath balm and not bath bomb (or the soothing angle like you said). It didn't matter, it just made me realize there was no rule about it one way or another, and felt we should all clarify it.

It's not just you. Another live game difference is that it's easy to tell if you guessed the wrong word but the correct color, because the spymaster will usually have to look at the chart before covering.

So I guess the next games are
Team spades
eyebooger
iraisetoomuch
killer_kill
vs
Team clubs
Carl_Spackler
JMurder3
d1iab


and

Team diamonds
xander biscuits
rtspurs
jumpluff
vs
Team hearts
bolt2112
Lattimer
insanity

Spades/diamonds can be red and hearts/clubs blue to switch up the colors.

I legit thought it was "bath balm".

I did too, but I thought it was the Cuban Shuffle. So what do I know.

I guess I don't really care if people use "knight" to clue for something like "armor" and "moon". If the spymaster wants to take that risk they can go for it.

"Knight" for "night" is obviously out of the question.

What are thoughts on using punctuation in clues? As an example, using clear! to link emergency and glass.

I wouldn't expect it to come up much, but just curious.

I don't like it. IMO all clues should be given in a neutral manner.

I agree with this.

One thing I didn't see a whole lot of comment on is using a proper name as both a reference to the person and the meaning of their name.

(Brad) Pitt for "fight" and "hole"

I think I'm OK with it, similar to "knight" as a clue for "moon." The spymaster can take the risk if they'd like. Not a lot of proper names that would work for that anyway. Most that would work would simply not be viewed as a name.

We recently discussed homophones either in this thread or one of the others. There were only a few replies but I believe most who chimed in were ok with it.

Not sure how there's any difference whatsoever between Pitt for pit & knight for night? Couldn't imagine having a different rule for them.

I understand exactly what he's saying, & I don't really care if you can clue Pitt for hole or knight for moon. I just care that they have the same rule for both of those examples.

I realized that so I deleted, but you caught it

There's no difference, and we shouldn't

The only reason I was even mentioning it is a hold-over from the days of 100+ post arguments over what sort of things can be clued with proper nouns. When you restrict it to one word, almost all of that stuff doesn't matter, because you can't use a proper noun to angle-shoot multiple words.

We're on the same page

Yes...now it looks like quite the strawman haha.

The real expert clue would be Pitt = fight, hole & panther.

Should we get another 3v3 slow game (or two) going?

In