presentation

Chiffre

Decode the opponent’s message

Inspector Wolf must be faster in decoding the message from Mafia boss Volpone than Volpone can decode the message from the informer to the inspector.

You hold a set of 21 letter cards – letters j, w, v, x and y are missing – and the cards with vowels are marked as vowels with all five vowels on the backside. You draw three topic cards, secretly decide on a topic and put down a word of four letters, suiting the selected topic. Then, in turn, you have one of four options: 1. You place a letter openly next to a letter in your opponent’s word who puts this letter – depending on the alphabetical order – on top or at the bottom of his letter. If you lay down the correct letter, the opponent reveals his letter. 2. Guess an opposing letter; if you are correct, you get back all your letters there. 3. Guess the opposing topic. 4. Guess the opponent’s word; if you succeed, you win.

In a variant, letters are revealed only if you guess them with option 2 „guess opposing letter“. For Option 1, the opponent can place your correct letter above or below the letter in his word without revealing his letter. For another variant. you can agree on a number of rounds and score points in each round: If you guess the opponent’s word first, you score five points and your opponent scores one point for each correctly guessed letter so for. After the agreed number of rounds you win with most points.

Chiffre is a very well-made deduction version in the tradition of Mastermind and other such games, with the additional help that letters laid out by the opponent cannot be in his code word and that vowels are marked as such.

Players: 2

Age: 10+

Time: 20+

Designer: Peer Sylvester

Artist: Lutz Eberle, Simone Hölsch, U.O.R.G.

Price: ca. 9 Euro

Publisher: Gmeiner Verlag 2018

Web: www.gmeiner-verlag.de

Genre: Codes, deduction

Users: With friends

Special: 2 players

Version: de

Rules: de

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Nice deduction variant

Good mix of vocabulary demand and association

Attractive travel game

Compares to:

Mastermind and other code deduction games

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 2

Knowledge (yellow): 2

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0