Line-Up
Two players, twenty-four faces, and one of them is yours. Ask about hair, hats, glasses and the rest until you can name the face the other player was given. Nobody has to be trusted to answer honestly: both faces are drawn from the game's seed and the site answers every question from them.
The rules
- You each get the same board of twenty-four faces, and each of you is secretly given one of them. Yours is shown on your own card; theirs is what you are trying to find.
- Take turns. On your turn you either ask one question or name a face, and you cannot do both.
- A question is one thing about a face, chosen from the twenty on the pad: is the hair red, is there a hat, are there glasses, and so on. You cannot make one up, and you do not have to word it.
- The site answers yes or no from the face the other player was given, and both of you see the answer. Then the faces the answer rules out are taken off your board for you.
- You cannot ask the same question twice in a round. You also cannot ask one that every face left on your board answers the same way: it would cost you a turn and tell you nothing, so it is refused before you spend it.
- The other player's board is shown beside yours, so you can see how close they are getting.
Naming a face
- Instead of asking, you can name any face still on your board. Tap it, or press its first letter.
- Name the right one and you win the round.
- Name the wrong one and you lose the round there and then. It is not a free guess, and the game asks you to confirm before it counts.
- So naming a face is a gamble on purpose. Two faces left is a coin toss; asking one more question makes it certain, if they do not name yours first.
How a match ends
- Each round is won by whoever names the other's face, or by whoever did not name the wrong one. A round cannot be drawn.
- The first to win two rounds wins the match, so a match is two or three rounds.
- The loser of a round asks first in the next one, which is what stops going first being worth something on its own.
- Both faces are shown at the end of every round, and new ones are drawn for the next.
- A resignation ends the match against that player, and so does a missed deadline: the deadline is set when the game is made, and running out of time loses it.
Worth knowing before you start
- The best question is the one that splits your board nearest in half, whatever the answer turns out to be. A question only five faces answer yes to tells you little most of the time.
- That is only true while you are level. If the other player is clearly ahead, halving the board loses slowly: naming a face while you still have three or four left is the play that can still win.
- Nothing is hidden except the two faces. Every question, every answer and both boards are open, so you can work out exactly what they know.
Both faces are drawn from the game's seed before a single question is asked, and the seed is published when the match ends, so anybody can replay the game and check that neither face changed. Every answer is the site's arithmetic over those faces rather than the other player's word, which is the one thing that goes wrong with this game across a table.
Line-Up terms
- Your face
- The face you were given, shown on your own card. The other player is trying to name it.
- Your board
- The twenty-four faces, with the ones an answer has ruled out greyed but still shown, so you can see your own working.
- A question
- One thing about a face, from the pad of twenty. The site answers it from the other player's face.
- A spent question
- One you have asked already, or one every face left on your board answers the same way. Both are refused rather than wasted.
- Naming a face
- Saying which face you think they were given. Right wins the round, wrong loses it.