Today I want to share an entire game with you. I was shown this recently and it quickly caught on in my gaming group. There are no particular winners or losers; it’s more of a group puzzle than a competitive game. Regardless, it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Even if it doesn’t sound great… give it a try, you won’t regret it.

We know this game only as “The Forehead Game.” If you know it by another name, let me know!

Players: 4-7. It’s possible to play with more but the game takes longer, requires more advanced players, and tends to acquire more colorful names.

Setup: Take an ordinary deck of cards. Remove the face cards, leaving the 2-10 of every suit. Deal one card to each player. Each player, without looking at their card, picks it up and holds it against his/her forehead (so you can see everyone’s card but your own).

Play: Starting with the dealer and proceeding clockwise, every player makes a guess of the rank of their card out of the number of unique ranks between all players. (Assume your own card is unique unless you have reason to believe otherwise.) For example, in a 6-player game, if the dealer sees the following cards: 2, 2, 4, 9, 10, the dealer should guess “3 of 5.” Other players should take the previous guesses into account.

If the dealer is part of a pair, it is possible for the number of unique ranks to drop as the round progress. For example, the dealer might guess 2/5 and the second player guesses 4/4. After this, everyone knows there are only 4 unique ranks; the dealer knows she is part of a pair, but not who her match is.

Players go around the table twice guessing their relative rank. Then they go around once more, this time trying to guess the exact value of the card. After making this final guess, the player can look at his or her own card.

Notes:

• The objective is for the players, as a group, to get their guesses right as much as possible. Deliberately misleading guesses are against the spirit of the game.
• When guessing your relative rank, your first priority should be to be correct the highest percentage of the time, and your second priority should to be as close as possible to the correct relative rank. (So if 1/4, 3/4, and 4/4 are all equally likely, guess ¾)
• It’s best to keep table talk to a minimum. This is surprisingly hard because even the most seemingly innocuous comments can give huge amounts of information.
• However, it’s generally considered acceptable to use other players’ reactions or uncertainty as a clue. It’s also generally considered acceptable to provide a level of certainty (dead certain, pretty sure, guessing, wildly guessing) along with your guess.
• It’s a crying shame that I picked up this game after I left college, because it would make a damn fine strip game.
• Instead, I’m going to use it as an interview exercise when I have my own software company someday.