Top 100: #8 13 Clues

Following right after Hanabi is a game that uses the same mechanic but in different ways. Instead of being cooperative though 13 Clues is a competitive game in which you are trying to solve your own case before others solve theirs. You will have to use the knowledge you can see and pointed questions in order to acquire knowledge.

As we mentioned 13 clues uses a very similar card mechanic that Hanabi uses where you can see everyone else’s answer as it is placed in front of them facing away from them. So the answer to your case is directly in front of you and everyone else can see your answer. Everyone also has some private information behind their screen so they all know a little bit extra.

On your turn you can do one of three actions. You can ask a player of your choice a question to get more information. The types of questions available are fairly restricted, essentially asking them how many of a certain card they can see. It would seem that they would directly give you an answer of what is in front of you but because of that secret information behind their screen they could be talking about those instead of the ones in front of you.


At certain player counts there are cards in the middle of the table. Instead of asking a question of another player you can spend one of your magnifying glasses to look at one of the cards in the middle to remove it from contention for your case. Lastly, you can attempt to solve your case - you get to keep playing if you are wrong which is super important to us in a deduction game. But it does cost you your turn so you won’t be gaining any information that round. If you were right though then you win the game!

So our love of deduction games continues into the Top 100 with 13 clues. And as  preview we can promise this isn’t the last one on the list. Evidently deduction is one of the ways we love using our brains while we are playing board games. 13 clues is simple mechanically and uses some great logic to figure out which cards are in front of you. If you want to test your powers of deduction and logic make sure to give 13 Clues - our #8 - a try!