How is “starting to play a card” not obviously cheating the “no communication” rule? And how would a third player “help out” two players who are unsure without doing any communication?
In general this feels like a timing calibration game when played correctly—since technically any other form of communication is banned, and then it reduces to something not interesting. I presume the lesson is that players find the type/level of communication that makes the game interesting and use that?
I have played the game once, it became a timing calibration game the way Alexei describes, and I second his account that it felt amazing rather than uninteresting.
I might put it as something like—while the explicit rule is that communication is banned, the point is not to actually ban all communication. Rather it is to move to a more interesting form of communication, where you are incentivized to really pay attention to the other players, and shift into a form of wordless flow. To use a physical analogy, you go from walking side to side (normal speech) to dancing together (playing The Mind).
The group I played with (same as Mark Xu’s group from comment above) decided that “S2 counting is illegal (you have to let your gut ‘feel’ the right amount of time)” and “repeating some elaborate ritual that takes the same amount of time before your card is due is illegal” (e.g. you can stick your hand 10% of the way towards the pile when the number’s 10 off from your card, and 50% of the way when it’s 5 off.)
How is “starting to play a card” not obviously cheating the “no communication” rule? And how would a third player “help out” two players who are unsure without doing any communication?
In general this feels like a timing calibration game when played correctly—since technically any other form of communication is banned, and then it reduces to something not interesting. I presume the lesson is that players find the type/level of communication that makes the game interesting and use that?
I have played the game once, it became a timing calibration game the way Alexei describes, and I second his account that it felt amazing rather than uninteresting.
I might put it as something like—while the explicit rule is that communication is banned, the point is not to actually ban all communication. Rather it is to move to a more interesting form of communication, where you are incentivized to really pay attention to the other players, and shift into a form of wordless flow. To use a physical analogy, you go from walking side to side (normal speech) to dancing together (playing The Mind).
The group I played with (same as Mark Xu’s group from comment above) decided that “S2 counting is illegal (you have to let your gut ‘feel’ the right amount of time)” and “repeating some elaborate ritual that takes the same amount of time before your card is due is illegal” (e.g. you can stick your hand 10% of the way towards the pile when the number’s 10 off from your card, and 50% of the way when it’s 5 off.)
I second what Kaj said. If you’re curious I can go and copy the rules verbatim.