help me figure out the “code” behind a telepathy game
my friends played a “telepathy game” in front of me.
how it works:
- i pick a word and secretly communicate it to one of them
- the person who knows the word proceeds to list several words that are incorrect, eventually they say the “secret word” i picked
- the person who doesn’t know the word has to say “no” when the word is incorrect, and “yes” when my friend finally says the magic word. when they say yes and guess the word, the game is over.
we played several games and there were no mistakes: they always said yes once the correct word was spoken aloud, they always said no to the incorrect words.
my first guess was that they had an agreed upon “category” of words, such that when a word in that category is spoken, the other person knows the next word is the correct one
i googled it at home and there seems to be a trick with that exact premise called “black magic”, you list several words or point to several objects, when you point/say something that is black, the next word is correct
practical example: i pick “sunshine” as a word and communicate it to A.
A: tree
B: no
A: water
b: no
A: (any other word, as long as the color of the thing/concept isn’t black, for however many rounds)
B: no
A: raven (this is the signal-ravens are black)
B: no
A: sunshine
B: yes
the problem is, i can’t figure out the category that the “signal words” belong in.
from what i can remember of the last rounds, when i was actually focusing:
i picked dice, their penultimate word was their dog’s name
i picked rust, their penultimate word was van
i picked hotel, their penultimate word was their cat’s name
the only pattern here is pet names, but there’s van in the mix and they weren’t using pets, animals, personal names or anything related in the other rounds as far as i can remember. one of them has a van, so it could be “things we have/own”— but then again in other rounds words like “shirt” or “glasses” came up, which they also own, and they weren’t “signal words” but were spoken earlier on.
i would exclude any kind of grammar or math based code since they insist it’s very easy and doesn’t require thinking. so no number of sillables/counting words/same initial (also because their pets’ names don’t share the same initials as the words picked)
i would exclude verbal/body language based tells since they insist it could be played over text.
they insist that the rule is stupidly simple, the sort of thing that makes you feel dumb for not getting it before
when i was telling them my theory about the “signal” before the actual word they agreed it might have something to do with that. but when i proposed, as an example, that i play the same game with our other friend but pick “things she likes” as the category, they said it sounded too complicated
if anyone can tell me the known variations of this game i can try to remember if any of them seems to fit the way they were playing