List of games with concealed rules

Games with concealed rules are games where the rules are intentionally concealed from new players, either because their discovery is part of the game itself, or because the game is a hoax and the rules do not exist. In fiction, the counterpart of the first category are games that supposedly do have a rule set, but that rule set is not disclosed.

Actual games

Discovery games

• Could I Take A Train?/The Travelling Game: A party game in which new players take it in turns asking returning players "Could I take a train from x to x?", where 'x' is any conceivable place in the universe. The new players are told yes or no, and must attempt to discern the rule by which they can or cannot travel to a place. Returning players may give examples to purposefully confuse the new players into thinking there are rules about place length or letters. The actual rule is simple - before the second place name, the player must make a thoughtful noise, such as "um," "er," or "ah." For example, you could not take a train from London to Jupiter, but you could take a train from Dublin to, er, Chernobyl.
• Eleusis: A card game in which one player secretly decides on a rule which determines which cards may be played on top of each other. The other players then use deductive logic to work out the secret rule.
• Haggle: A party game in which the Gamemaster divides a set of cards and a subset of the full rules among players and allows them to trade for other cards and rules.
• Mao: A shedding-type card game where the winner of a round adds a concealed rule of their choice to all subsequent rounds.
• Masterpiece: A party game where the rule for creating a masterpiece must be discovered by new players. One player in the know begins, proclaiming they hold the "Brush of Destiny" or something similarly respectable. They then make brush stroke motions however they wish and declare the result a masterpiece, then make a big deal out of handing the Brush of Destiny to the next person, telling them that they must hold the Brush to play the game. Players create a 'masterpiece' if they thank the previous player for handing them the Brush.
• Paranoia: A tabletop role-playing game in which the rules are considered "classified". Only the Gamemaster has full knowledge of the rules, while other players must deduce them by trial and error as they proceed through the game. (The game acknowledges that players may read the gamemaster section, but demonstrating knowledge of the rules is considered treasonous, and the gamemaster may also make arbitrary changes.)
• Penultima: A chess variant in which the spectators make secret rules governing how the pieces move and capture. The two players are unaware of the rules and must discover them by inductive reasoning.
• Scissors: A party game in which a pair of scissors is passed between players, with the passer declaring that they are being passed "open" or "closed" based on an individual and secret rule. The other players must use observation to deduce the rule each player uses to make the declaration.
• Whose Triangle Is It?: A party game in which one player points to three people or objects, forming an imaginary triangle, and then asks "Whose triangle is it?" The triangle belongs to the person closest to the closest object of a similar color to the color of second point of the triangle, but this rule is not told to new players, and the game is for new players to figure out what the rule is.
• Zendo: A game in which one player creates a rule for structures to follow and the other players try to discover the rule by building structures

Hoax or joke games

• 52 Pickup: A card game in which dealer scatters the cards on the floor and non-dealer must pick them up.
• Mornington Crescent: Originally a round in the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. The game consists of each panelist in turn announcing a landmark or street, most often a tube station on the London Underground system. The apparent aim is to be the first to announce "Mornington Crescent", a station on the Northern Line. Despite appearances, however, there are no rules to the game, and both the naming of stations and the specification of "rules" are based on stream-of-consciousness association and improvisation. Thus the game is intentionally incomprehensible.

Games in works of fiction

Games with undisclosed rules

• 43-Man Squamish: MAD Magazine published an article outlining a college sport designed to be unplayable. The sport features a pentagonal field, silly-sounding terms and a dummy on each team.
• Calvinball: In the comic series Calvin & Hobbes, Calvinball is a game regularly played by the main characters. The only consistent rule of Calvinball is that "Calvinball may never be played with the same rules twice".
• Double Fanucci: Featured in the computer game Zork Zero, Double Fanucci has mind-bogglingly complex "rules". Legal play can depend on things like the phase of the Moon and the ancestry of the players.
• Dragon Poker: A fictional card game by Robert Asprin in the MythAdventures series. The rules change depending on weather, seating position, time of day, and other undisclosed modifiers. However, a playable version has been created by fans, based on the rules and play that are presented in the books.
• Guyball: In the British sitcom Green Wing, according to Guy the game consists simply of "putting the ball into the basket". The basket in question is part of the toppmeiler, a special helmet worn by one or more of the players.

Hoax games

• Numberwang: A recurring "game show" on the sketch series That Mitchell and Webb Look. Similar to Mornington Crescent above, the "contestants" call out random numbers in an attempt to score a "Numberwang", though the responses are scripted and there are no actual rules to winning a "Numberwang".
• Clique: The online satirical gaming magazine Critical Miss featured rules for a card game called Clique, a parody of collectible card games that used printed cards and spurious spoken rules to confuse onlookers.
• Cups: A card game devised by Chandler in the Friends episode The One on the Last Night, whose rules were created on the spot so that each of Joey's moves made him automatically win.
• Fizzbin: In the Star Trek episode "A Piece of the Action", James T. Kirk created this game while he and Cmdr. Spock were being held prisoner. They "taught" the game to the guards, improvising the rules until their captors were sufficiently distracted, then overpowered them and escaped.

See also

• List of fictional games

External links

• Calvinball - Television Tropes & Idioms