How to play Dead Giveaway
You know these people. Prove it.
Play Dead GiveawayTrue stories, wrong guesses
Dead Giveaway is a guessing game played with true stories from your own lives. Somebody picks a one-word topic, say elevators, and everyone writes a few short stories from their own life that fit it. Then the stories come out one at a time with no names on them, and the whole room guesses who wrote each one.
You score for naming the right person, and you score when people get yours wrong. A story that could belong to several people at the table is the hardest to place.
It is for three to eight people who know each other at least a little, and it takes twenty to thirty minutes.
The topic and the stories
One player, picked at random, sets the topic: one word, or a random one if nothing comes to mind. Then everyone writes at the same time, at least three stories and as many as six, each up to 280 characters.
Every story has to be true and from your own life. The ones that score best are the ones nobody would expect from you.
A round
A game is eight rounds, and each round reveals one story. The eight are chosen so that nobody has a second story among them until everyone has one.
Everyone guesses on every story, including its author, so nobody can tell whose story it is from who sits out.
Scoring
Name the author and you score 2. The author scores 1 for every player who guessed wrong. A guess on your own story scores nothing, right or wrong.
From round four, every point is doubled: a right guess pays 4, and the author gets 2 for every wrong one.
When the game ends, every story is shown again with its author's name.
The elevator story
Five players, the topic is elevators, and it is round five, so every point is doubled. The story says:
I got stuck in an elevator for fifty minutes with my old maths teacher, and she made me do long division to pass the time.
Sam and Lena both guess Ayşe, who has spent the evening telling everyone how much she loved school. You guess Sam. Ayşe guesses Kemal, because he has spent the same evening insisting he failed maths.
It was Kemal. Ayşe guessed right, and in a doubled round that is 4 points. You, Sam and Lena all missed, so Kemal gets 2 for each of you: 6 points for a story that sounded like anyone but him.
Writing and guessing better
Choose a story that does not match the version of you everyone expects. If people associate you with stories about your dog, write about a different part of your life.
Write all six. Eight stories get told, and at a small table only a few of those come one per player. The rest are drawn from everyone's leftovers, and each extra story you write is another chance that one of them is yours.
Look for small clues: word choice, spelling, a place, a detail from someone's past.
Keep your reactions neutral when your own story appears. You still guess alongside everyone else, and your expression may give you away.
Rounds four to eight decide most games. A right guess there is worth 4, and an author who fools six people collects 12.