Cryptic Words is a word guessing game for two players. Each player thinks of a secret word and hides it in plain sight for their opponent to guess using common clues.
The game is played in rounds until someone hits or exceeds 30 points.
In each round, players first grab six hexagonal letter tiles and secretly think of a 3- to 8-letter words and encode and it using a proprietary tracking form. They write down the codes for their word, shuffle their tiles and swap them with their opponent.
Using the game board, players arrange the tiles in any order front of them. The deduction phase starts.
Players take turns rolling two dice and either perform an action on doubles or strategically pose a question. The question will try to pinpoint letters in the opponent's word. Both players must answer the question. The answer may reveal a letter in an opponent's word.