Master Word - How To Play

hi and welcome to watch it played my name is rodney smith and in this video we're going to learn the three to six player game masterword where'd it go oh yes here it is this is master word designed by gerald catio and published by scorpion masque who helped sponsor this video one of you will play as the guide who secretly knows a master word and has to lead the other players known as the seekers to discover it will you be able to help the seekers in their search for the master word and will the seekers follow your hints and figure out the solution well let's find out join me at the table and we'll learn how to play before you begin choose a player to be the guide in this case that'll be me everyone else will play as seekers and each seeker takes one dry erase marker and six clue cards to write on if you have only two seekers then they take 12 cards each either way the seekers will also share these three solution cards which can be identified by their red border and they should set these nearby the guide now collects these thumbs up tokens and the master word cards they then secretly remove the front card numbered one here this will have a hint at the top and a master word at the bottom that the guide will be trying to get the seekers to guess now the guy can always move on to another card if they're not comfortable with the one that they revealed but we'll assume that they stick with this one after memorizing the secret word they'll then slide the card into the card holder hiding the word and keeping the hint showing at the top the guide will now announce the hint out loud in this case animal and then place the card holder where the seekers can easily see it to play you'll also need a 90 second timer and anything will do including using the timer on your phone but otherwise that's the setup in masterword the seekers and the guide will win or lose as a team in other words everyone has the same goal the seekers are trying to figure out what the master word is and the guide is trying to help them do that the game is played over a series of rounds and you begin each round by starting your 90-second timer the seekers will then use this time to think up suggestions they want to make about the master word these suggestions are known as clues they can discuss their clue ideas with one another but each player will be responsible for submitting their own individual clue before the time runs out and the guide cannot participate in this discussion in any way each seeker writes their clue on one of their clue cards and clues can be made up of multiple words but must communicate a single idea for example if the exposed hint was animal you could write mammal or lives in the jungle as each of these is a single characteristic that an animal could have clues can only be about the meaning of the master word not about its spelling or pronunciation so you couldn't use rhymes with liger or is longer than seven letters however seekers are allowed to repeat previously used clues or even submit the same clues during the same turn which might be helpful in determining which clues are correct as we'll see later i should also mention that if you're playing a game with only two seekers then each of them writes down two clues per round once every seeker is written down their clue or the 90 seconds are over the seekers must place their clues in a row beneath the masterword card holder like this this time limit is not a hard and fast deadline so if someone is still writing down their clue when the timer goes off you can let them finish but if a seeker hasn't written anything down after 90 seconds they must submit a blank card with the clues submitted it's now the guide's turn and they begin by reading each clue and if necessary asking the seekers for clarification for example here i might ask when you say it lives in the jungle do you mean it only lives in the jungle or that it can live in the jungle once all the clarifications have been given the guide now has to determine how many of the clues they feel are on the right track towards helping the players guess the master word deciding whether or not a clue is on the right track is entirely up to the guide and remember the guide is trying to help the seekers so they shouldn't be asking themselves which of these clues are technically correct they should be asking which of these clues are actually helpful for example with a hint like animal if one of the seekers wrote as their clue eats worms since cow is the master word technically speaking i'm sure a cow occasionally slurps up a worm when eating grass but the guide could decide that's not a very helpful clue it might be concerned this would instead lead the seekers to start thinking about birds or fish once the guide has determined how many clues they believe are helpful they then place that number of thumbs up tokens in a pile at the end of the row of clue cards these tokens must all be placed at once not one at a time and the guide cannot give any indication about which specific clues they're for so in this case the seekers know that one of their clues are good but not which one with the tokens placed the round is complete you now reset the 90 second timer and begin another round of offering clues which will be placed in a new row underneath the previous ones no new words are given as hints by the guide instead the seekers will examine the previous rows of clues and the number of tokens the guide placed beside them and use that information to keep narrowing down the possibilities the seekers will have up to seven rounds like this to try and guess the master word if they cannot figure it out after the seventh round everyone loses so how do the seekers show they've figured out the master word and how can there be seven rounds if each player only gets six clue cards well those are great questions from the second round onward seekers can offer a solution instead of a clue to do this any player can take any one of the three solution cards the ones with the red border and then write a guess on it instead of submitting a clue for example someone might write horse on a solution card putting this in the row with the rest of the clues for that round and if it's correct the guide would reveal the master word from the tray and then everyone would win now remember seekers can discuss their proposed solutions and clues amongst themselves so they should probably make sure that the other players are somewhat confident with the solution before offering it this is especially important because as a team the seekers only have three solution cards to use after three guesses have been made if they haven't gotten the right answer with any one of them everyone immediately loses if players are feeling risky they can even submit two or more solutions within the same row which they might have to do if they're on the last round if the word written on a solution card is not the master word the guide just treats it as a normal clue placing a number of tokens indicating the number of correct clues as usual but taking this into account as well for example in this case the guide might think that horses are pretty good clue to get them towards cow so maybe they gave one of these thumbs up for that reason when you think you might be getting close to knowing the master word as seekers you have to be really careful because if you ever write the master word on one of the regular clue cards the guide must stop the game and everyone immediately loses the master word can only ever be written on one of the three solution cards which makes it a little more challenging but don't worry the guide has another way of helping the seekers once per game the guide can take a token they've placed at the end of a row from any round and place it directly on the clue it refers to from its row this lets the seekers know for sure this is one of the correct clues and those are all the rules the team of players wins as soon as a seeker writes the master word on a solution card within the seven rounds of the game if they figure it out on the seventh round they've earned the rank of eagle eye if they do it on the fifth or sixth round they earned the bloodhound rank and if they manage to find the master word on four or fewer rounds they earn the impressive title of master fox however if the seekers cannot figure out the word after seven rounds or if they use up all three solution cards on incorrect answers or if they write the master word on a clue card everyone loses win or lose when the game is over you can begin another one by wiping the cards clean then you place the just used master word card behind this separator revealing the next card in line the cards increase in difficulty as you go and they're numbered from 1 to 150 when you're done with the first 150 numbers you can turn the deck around to reveal cards 151 to 300 meaning there's lots of games to be played in this box and that's how you play master word if you have any questions at all about anything you saw here feel free to put them in the comments below and i'll gladly answer them as soon as i get a chance you'll also find forums for discussion pictures other videos and lots more over on the games page at board game geek and i'll put a link to that in the description below and if you found this video helpful please consider giving it a like subscribing and clicking that little bell icon so you get notification anytime we post a new video but until next time thanks for watching [Music] you