ContraBanter Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Setup
• The Basics
• Round Order and Structure
• The Smuggling Team
• How to Say Words
• The Listening Team(s)
• Scoring Points
• Round End
• End Game Scoring
• Advanced Game

Overview

These Secret Words are hot stuff! Can you sneak them past your friends without getting caught? Win the game by guessing the other team's secret words and by sneaking your own secret words past them!

Parts

• 141 Secret Word cards (each card has 2 words on it)
• 20 Optional Prompt cards
• 9 Guess cards
• 9 Card Stands
• 30 Marked cards (for the Advanced Mode)

You'll need to provide your own timer. We use our phones!

Note: Use of a pen & paper or other note-taking device is prohibited unless a player requires them for accessibility.

Setup

1. Form 2 or 3 teams.
   • We recommend keeping the teams even with no more than 3 players per team. If you have a very large group though, you can play with up to 5 people on each team.
   • Teammates should sit next to one another.
   • Each team takes 3 Card Stands.
2. Prepare Decks.
   • Shuffle the Secret Word and Prompt decks and place them face-down in the center of the table.
   • If you are playing the Advanced Mode, shuffle the Marked cards and place them in the center of the table as well.
   • For your first game, we recommend not using the Marked cards.
3. Decide Word Set.
   • Decide what set of Words you want to use for this game: Top (Round word bubble) or Bottom (Square word bubble).
   • There is no difference in difficulty between the two sets, but it's important that everyone is using the same set for the entire game.
4. Deal Cards.
   • Deal each team 3 Secret Word cards, 3 Guess cards, and a Prompt card face-down.
   • Each team places their Secret Word cards in their card stands. Make sure only your team can see them.
   • Place the Guess cards in front of your card stands.
5. Determine 1st Smuggling Team.

The Basics

Over 3 rounds, teams will compete to smuggle their Secret Words past one another during Q&A conversations. After each turn as Smuggler, teams will earn points for each Secret Word they said and have the option to discard any unsaid words and refill back to 3.

The team with the most points after 3 rounds wins!

Round Order and Structure

Each round, teams will take turns acting as the Smuggling Team and the Listening Team. A team's turn as Smugglers begins when a Listening Team asks them a question. The question may be from a Prompt card or one they just made up.

After asking the question, start the timer. The Smuggling Team has 90 seconds to sneak their words by the Listening Team(s). There may be chatter between turns, but when the timer is running give the Smuggling Team the floor and listen closely — only interrupt when you are ready to guess.

The Smuggling Team

Objective:

• Players on the Smuggling Team can say their Secret Words any time while the 90-second timer is running.
• A team will get 1 point at the end of each round for each of their Secret Words they successfully smuggled past their opponents in conversation, no matter how many times it is said!
• However, DO NOT reveal your smuggled words! Successfully smuggled words are kept for the next round and must be smuggled AGAIN!
• See page 9 for rules on tracking points.
• If a word is unsaid it doesn't earn any points.

Tips for Word-Smugglers:

• Try to guide the conversation so your Secret Words come through naturally.
• You don't have any obligation to answer the question asked. It's just a prompt to help you get talking! Feel free to ignore it or change the subject whenever!
• Even if you have said all your words already, you should still use all your remaining time. It might help hide what you said earlier!

How to Say Words

How you ask and answer questions is up to you. You may lie, change the subject, or tell a story about your Uncle Pete's legendary fork collection.

However, you may not speak in gibberish, spew random words, or use a language not commonly understood at the table.

Your Secret Words must be AUDIBLE — no muttering. Here's the sneaky part though… AUDIBILITY is key. So long as the other players can HEAR your word, any version of that word is acceptable. If the WHOLE SOUND of your word is discernible, the usage counts!

For example, if your Secret Words were 'New', 'Ball', and 'Lose'...

Homophones are allowed.

• "I knew her ways well."
• "He started to bawl."
• "We stopped at Lou's Diner."

Compound words are allowed.

• "Go read a newspaper!"
• "You are some kinda screwball!"
• "Welcome to loserville!"

Grammatical variants (verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc.) are allowed, so long as the word's whole sound is preserved.

• "Our newest shipment!"
• "Me? A professional baller?!"
• "I'm just always losing tails, huh?"

Proper Nouns are allowed.

• "He was in The New Kids On The Block."
• "Miley's greatest song is Wrecking Ball."
• "Do you remember The Biggest Loser"?

Near rhymes are NOT allowed.

• "I know a good deal when I see it!"
• "I had to bail my bookie out."
• "Loose lips sink ships."

Different pronunciations (including malapropisms) are also allowed:

• DOES: "That does make sense," OR "We saw three does in the meadow."
• CONTENT: "I feel content," OR "This game has a lot of content."
• OTTER: "What a cute baby otter!" OR "I really otter give him a piece of my mind!"

Note: The same rules apply to guessing. If your word is BALL and you say, "I love baseball," when Cheryl guesses your word is 'Baseball', Cheryl's guess is correct.

Playfulness is to be encouraged! When in doubt, take the more open interpretation of these rules.

The Listening Team(s)

Objective:

• While your opponents are speaking, it's your job to listen (not talk!) and spot the hidden words they are sneaking through.

When to Guess:

Listening Teams may make guesses in 2 ways:

1. Listening teams may shout "FREEZE!", "STOP RIGHT THERE!", "HALT!" or any similar phrase and pause the timer any time during an answer to guess a suspicious word. Players must make 1 guess when they pause the timer; they may not pause it just to confer and then resume listening.
2. After the timer is up, teams may use up to 1 of their unspent guesses. Try to use at least 2 of your guesses while the timer is running!

How to Resolve a Guess:

After a guess is made, the Smuggling Team must truthfully reveal if the guess is Correct or Wrong.

• If the guess is correct, the Listening Team has successfully confiscated a word!
  • The Smuggling Team gives the guessed Word card face-up to the team that guessed.
  • The Listening Team that made the guess flips over one of their Guess cards to its 'X' Spent side.
• If the guess is wrong, just flip over one of the Listening Team's Guess cards to its 'X' Spent side.

When a team has 3 'X's showing on their Guess cards, they are out of guesses for the round! This is especially important to remember in 3-team games. After resolving the guess, resume the timer and allow the Smuggling Team to continue with their answer!

Even if you run out of guesses, it's important to keep paying attention! Any words that your opponent successfully smuggles will have to be kept for the next round, so listen carefully!

Example: This team has 2 unspent guesses and 1 spent guess.

Scoring Points

When a Smuggling Team's timer is up, and each Listening Team has had a chance to use their one post-timer guess, the Smuggling Team completes the following steps to score their points:

• The Smuggling Team gets 1 Point for each Secret Word they said that was not caught by a Listening Team. (3 in a perfect round!)
• For each point the Smuggling Team earns, they draw a face-down card from the Secret Word deck and add it to a pile near their card holders.
• In future rounds, when a team earns more points, they should add them to their stack to keep track of total points.

After all teams have taken a Smuggling turn and earned any points in Round 3, the game is over. Skip the rest of the steps on this page and go straight to END GAME SCORING.

Optional: Discard any words that teams failed to say. A team may now discard any of their unsaid Secret Words to a face-up pile by the deck.

• After a Smuggling team is done scoring points, the team to their left becomes the new Smuggling team. Repeat this process until each team has had a chance to play as Smuggler, then proceed to the Round End step on the next page.

Round End

Refill Word Cards:

• Each team draws new cards from the Secret Word deck to refill any of their empty card holders for the next round.

Flip Guess cards to their green unspent side.

Start the next round! The turn order is the same as the previous round.

End Game Scoring

After 3 Rounds the game is over and a winner is determined according to these rules:

Each team totals their points.

1. Each face-down Secret Word card earned by smuggling is worth 1 point.
2. Each confiscated word is worth 1 point.
3. Advanced Mode only: Each confiscated Marked card is also worth 1 point.

The team with the most points wins!

In the event of a tie, the team who has the most confiscations is the winner!

If there is STILL a tie after that point, the team who successfully smuggled the most syllables in their words during the final round wins!

Advanced Game

The game includes optional 'Marked' cards that add a spicy challenge! In this version, a few public words act like marked bills that could tie your team to a word smuggling crime! If you say a Marked word, the other team can rat you out and get points even faster.

Setup:

Place the deck of Marked cards near the center of the table. Reveal one Marked card face-up so all players can see it.

Gameplay:

• If any player says a word on a Marked card at any point during the game, a player on another team may immediately point out the word that was said, and take that card from the center of the table. If this is done while someone is answering a question, pause the timer before claiming the word! It does not use a Guess card to do this.
• As long as a team holds a Marked card, they can no longer safely say that word; if they do, the other team can steal the card for themselves.
• When you claim a Marked card, keep it face-up in front of your team's point stack near your confiscations. In this way, a Marked card may be stolen back and forth several times throughout the game.
• At the start of each new round, reveal a new Marked word card in the center of the table, ready to steal! This means that by the third round, there will be 3 Marked words that you need to watch out for!