Interesting idea, and always good to have a game that looks superficially like a normal version of itself from the outside, but where closer inspection shows that something strange is going on.

I assume the the teams are told which answer is which, when they get their first three? It does seem as if most teams would spend their pre-game time judiciously and quietly trading their information with other teams, rather than broadcasting it openly - anything being shouted out loud or shared on Twitter is inevitably going to be a wrong answer.

Scoring seems a little odd, that it's better for me to use my own Very Wrong answer (10 points) than to use the Correct one I've cleverly worked out from talking to other teams (2+7 points). I was expecting the scoring to be negative, for anyone who used a wrong answer. Have I misunderstood something?

Hi Kevan,

Thanks for the interest. The pub variation came about because I live in Switzerland and organising a test of the Sandpit variation was proving far too complicated. Also, my French sucks. Hence I developed an alternative that allowed us to test it over Skype. It's much simpler and much more intimate so it's a nice way to get into the thought processes behind the game. The more direct arguments over conflicts of information reminded me of a pub argument, ergo "Pub Variation". :)

As for putting your own answers, this is more important for the Pub Variation which is more face-to-face meaning it's likely another player will see what you've written. If you've been arguing for an answer and you don't put it down, that's a clear indication that your answer is wrong. For the Sandpit Variation, I kept it in because it would ease the scoring process but I can see where you're coming from there.

I'm intrigued by the idea that teams would trade information before the game. How would you know they were telling the truth? There seems little incentive to do that for this reason, and teams do get told which of their pieces of information is correct, which is wrong and which is very wrong. What they don't know is the information their competitors will have, nor which of those answers is actually correct, wrong, etc.

I'm starting to agree that the scoring for the Sandpit Variation could do with a bit of a rethink but I can tell you it works fine for the Pub Variation.

Cheers, Chris.

Conflating the two versions into a single page was too messy so I'm leaving them as two separate rulesets. As per Kevan's suggestion, you no longer get misinformation points for putting down answers from your own card during the quiz in the Sandpit Variation, though this feature will remain in the Pub Variation.