The Spy: a question and deduction game

What you need: a group, a clock and a deck of words

The Spy is for 3 to 12 players. The questions are asked out loud, so one phone is enough: once everyone has seen their role it sits in the middle of the table as clock and control panel. Alternatively, everyone uses their own phone in a room. Before you start, choose:

• Discussion time: 3, 5 or 8 minutes (5 by default).
• Deck: Places is the default and the one best suited to questioning; there are also Jobs and Cities (Premium decks) and, when playing on a single phone, Mixed, which draws from all of them.
• Your own word list: instead of a deck, words you have written yourselves.

Interrogation, accusations and the spy’s big gamble

The phone goes round the table and each person presses and holds to see their role. All the civilians get the same secret word; the spy only sees the category, for example “Places”. With Mixed, the spy is still told what kind of word has been drawn.

When everyone has seen their role, the app picks who asks the first question and the timer starts. From then on it is a chain: whoever asks puts the question to one person only; that person answers and then gets to question anyone they like. The game can end in three ways:

1. An accusation. At any moment someone can tap “Accuse someone”: the timer stops, you pick the suspect and the group decides whether they are Condemned or Acquitted. If they are acquitted, the discussion picks up with the time that was left.
2. The spy comes forward. When the spy thinks they have cracked it, they tap the button to reveal themselves and say their answer, which is typed into the phone; the group then confirms whether it is right. If the spy has second thoughts, the reveal can be cancelled and play resumes.
3. Time runs out. The final vote begins: decide together who the spy is and confirm the conviction on the phone.

• If the spy is convicted, the civilians win.
• If a civilian is convicted, the spy wins on the spot.
• If the spy comes forward and guesses right, the spy wins; a wrong guess hands victory to the civilians.

Five minutes at the station: a game, step by step

A group of five: Hannah, Dan, Chloe, Ollie and Auntie Sue. Places deck, 5 minutes. The word is Train Station; the spy is Dan, who only sees “Places”.

1. The app picks Chloe to start. Chloe to Ollie: “Have you ever turned up late?” Ollie: “More often than I’d like to admit.”
2. Ollie to Dan: “What do you usually take with you?” Dan, playing it safe: “Something to read and a bottle of water.”
3. Dan to Auntie Sue: “Would you take children there?” Sue: “Yes, but I’d keep them well back from the edge.” Dan makes a mental note: a dangerous edge.
4. Sue to Hannah: “What sound comes to mind?” Hannah: “Announcements nobody can ever understand.”
5. Chloe, suspicious of Ollie’s answer, accuses him. The timer stops, the group talks it over and acquits him: the discussion restarts where it left off.
6. Dan does not wait for his next turn: he comes forward and says “Train station”. The answer is typed in, the group confirms it and the spy wins.

The lesson for the civilians: “the edge” and “announcements” were both true details, but put side by side they gave the answer away. Mix precise questions with sideways ones.

With a phone each: secret votes and a grid of up to 20 words

In a room the host creates it, the others join with the code or the QR code, and only the host chooses the duration and the deck (Places, Jobs or Cities). Questions are still asked out loud; everything else goes through the phones:

• Everyone sees their role on their own screen and can check it again in private by pressing and holding. The spy reads only a generic theme, such as a place, and the word never reaches the spy’s phone.
• The accuser picks the suspect and confirms: the timer stops and everyone except the accused votes Guilty or Innocent. While voting is under way you only see the running count, not who chose what.
• A conviction needs a majority of those voting and, in any case, at least two guilty votes. If the accusation fails, the discussion resumes with the time remaining, and the accuser cannot accuse the same person again in that game.
• An accusation can be withdrawn by whoever made it or by the host; if the host closes the vote early, anyone who has not voted counts as innocent.
• The spy taps “I'm the spy — I'll try to guess” and gets a single attempt: they choose the answer from a grid of words from the deck (up to 20) that always includes the right one. The grid only appears once the spy has come forward.
• When time runs out, everyone votes on their own phone for who the spy is (not themselves). The person with the most votes is convicted; a tie means the spy wins. The host can bring the final vote forward if the group is stuck.
• If the spy leaves the room, the game stops.

Good questions, crafty answers

The best questions are the ones a civilian can answer in half a second while the spy has to make something up: “What do you usually buy there?”, “Do you go there more in summer or in winter?”, “Who works there?”. Avoid questions that describe the word (“Is there a platform?”): they help the spy far more than they help you.

As the spy, answer confidently and keep it general: “Depends who I’m going with” works for a thousand places. Listen carefully to everyone else’s answers, because they are your clues. And pick your moment to come forward: too early and you are guessing blind, too late and you risk being accused first.

The most common mistakes

• Letting the chain bounce between the same two or three people: whoever is never questioned stays invisible, and might well be the spy.
• Accusing on instinct in the first minute: with a single phone you can accuse again, but every wrong conviction ends the game in the spy’s favour.
• Answering too vaguely for fear of helping the spy: a cagey civilian looks just as guilty.

Who gets the most out of The Spy

It is a game of quick thinking and a straight face: it suits older children, teenagers and adults who love to talk and enjoy questions fired at them out of the blue. The ideal group is 5 to 8 people; with 3 or 4 the spy has little room to hide, and beyond 10 the chain of questions gets long, so it is worth choosing 8 minutes.

It works well over dinner, on a journey or to open a games night. If you prefer a calmer pace, with clues given in turn and a single vote at the end, try Impostor; to choose between the two, there is our guide to the differences.