How to play the Dener

As the Dener you're one player against the whole room. This guide shows you how to choose a secret word that holds up, break clues before contacts land, and keep your head when the clues start piling up.

By Ansh R. Suryavanshi, creator of ThoughtMatch

Your job as the Dener

The Dener picks the secret word for the round. Everyone else sees its first letter and its length, then works together to reveal the rest. Each time a contact holds, you have to reveal the next letter.

You can't post clues or make contact. Instead, you read every clue the players post and try to break them by guessing the word behind them. You have unlimited guesses, and you can guess at any time. You win the round if the players use up their 3 shared guesses at the secret word, if the optional round timer runs out, or if most players vote to give up.

Choosing a secret word

The secret word has a few rules:

• It must be 4 to 15 letters long.
• It must be a real English dictionary word, or a common place, day, month, festival or language.
• No people's names.
• If the host has picked Any word or Hinglish, any word made of letters goes.

You have 45 seconds to choose. If time runs out, the next Dener in the rotation takes over, so it's worth having a few words ready before your turn comes. The secret word ideas page has lists sorted by difficulty and theme.

Beyond the rules, a good secret word is one you'd expect everyone in the room to know. A word nobody recognizes isn't clever, it just makes the round frustrating. The challenge should come from the letters, not from the vocabulary.

Why first letters matter

The players can only post clues for words that start with the revealed letters. So the first letter decides how much room they have to work with.

• Common first letters like S, C, P, B and T give the players thousands of clue words. You can't predict theirs, so contacts come quickly. Expect a fast round.
• Rarer first letters like J, K, Q, Y and Z leave fewer clue words. The players have to reach for words you can guess, and you'll break more clues.

But rare letters cut both ways. A rare start also narrows the secret word. If the players see Z and five letters, a confident guess is not far away. A rare letter slows the clues down but can speed the guessing up.

Length and the letters that follow

Once the first contact holds, the prefix becomes two letters, and the second letter matters as much as the first. A word like rhubarb starts with a common letter, but RH leaves very few everyday clue words. The players will struggle to make the next contact. On the other hand, RH and seven letters doesn't leave much to guess.

Words that start with a common combination, like ST, CO or PR, give the players plenty of clue words but stay hard to guess for longer, because so many words share that start. Length helps you here. A long word usually needs more letters revealed before it becomes obvious, which means more contacts the players have to land.

Breaking clues

Breaking a clue means typing its word before a contact lands. A break earns you 2 points, reveals the word, and no letter of your secret is shown. That word also can't be used again for a new clue this round, which shrinks the players' options.

Because your guesses are unlimited and a wrong one costs nothing, breaking is about speed and volume.

• Try the obvious word first. Many clues are closer to definitions than their writers think. If the prefix is GA and the clue says "Where vegetables grow", type garden immediately.
• Use the prefix to list candidates. The clue word has to start with the revealed letters. With a long prefix, there may be only a few words that fit at all.
• Think about who wrote it. A clue from the friend who cooks probably points at food. A clue from the friend who plays football probably doesn't.
• Don't worry about plurals. Singular and plural count as the same word, so type whichever comes to mind first.
• Read in-jokes carefully. If you were there for the story, you have the same advantage as the players.

Guessing during the 10-second window

When a player presses Contact! on a clue, a 10-second countdown starts and others can join. You can keep trying to break that clue the whole time. A correct guess breaks it immediately and the contact is over.

This makes clues with a running contact your top priority. A clue with no contact can wait. A clue with a countdown will cost you a letter in a few seconds if you don't crack it. Switch to it, look at who pressed Contact!, and think about what that person and the clue giver have in common.

Staying calm

In a big room, clues can arrive faster than you can read them. Each player can have up to 3 open at once, so a group of eight might have plenty of clues on screen. You won't break them all, and you don't need to.

• Triage. Clues with contacts running come first, then clues you can break with an obvious guess.
• Remember that a failed contact costs you nothing. If any contacter writes a different word, nothing is revealed.
• When a new letter appears, clues that no longer fit the longer prefix are cancelled automatically. Every letter you give up clears some of the board.
• The players' guesses are their risk, not yours. Three wrong guesses hand you the round.

How the Dener scores

The Dener earns points in two ways:

The round win is the big prize, but breaks add up and they wear the players down. Every broken clue is a word they can't reuse and time they've spent without earning a letter. If the host has chosen "whoever cracked it" to pick the next Dener and you win, you stay on as Dener for the next round.

For the players' side of the game, including when they're likely to spend a guess, see the strategy guide. Knowing how clue givers think, from the guide on writing great clues, makes you a faster breaker too.