by W. Eric Martin

With BGG's SPIEL Essen 25 Preview now live, I thought I'd highlight a top pick from SPIEL Essen 24 — JinxO from designer Martin Ang and Indonesian publisher Tabletoys Games.

At first glance, you'd be hard pressed to spot JinxO in a crowd of party games given the regulation busy neon cover with a wacky title and a punny subtitle. The description on the BGG game page doesn't give you much to go on either:

Get a topic, write down answers, score points if your answers match others — okay, and?!

That's almost it. JinxO isn't recreating the party game genre; it's "just" a well-designed, familiar party game that delivers what you probably want in a party game: friendly time spent with others, with high-fives, fun discussions, and gentle disagreements sprinkled into the mix.

At the start of a round, someone chooses one of two topics on a card. Here are a few examples:


And for those who can't read upside down, here they are again:


Everyone writes three answers into their 3x3 grid, then you do this two more times with new cards to end up with a grid that looks like this:


In turn, players read off one answer on their board:

• If anyone else wrote that answer, they raise their hand, and you all circle that answer on your board.
• If exactly one other person wrote that answer, you both circle it, then you fill in the star in that square.
• If no one raises their hand, look sad, then X out that answer.

Keep going until every space is circled or Xed on one player's board, at which point the round ends. You then score 1 point for each circle, 2 extra points for each star, and 1-3 points for each row or column in which all three answers are circled. (You can see the bonus points on the right and bottom of the grid.)

Tally your points, which will ideally be more than 6 as in my first round above. Erase your board, do this twice more, see who has the high score and wins, then bicker over how your great answers went unmatched as you erase the board once more and pack up.


I've played JinxO seven times on a review copy with 5-7 players, and the game has gone over well almost universally — which makes sense because as with many party games, JinxO is primarily a vehicle for you to spend time with your fellow humans in a relaxed, low-stress environment. If you write down an obvious answer and score it, cheers all around! If you manage to bag only one match, only two of you are cheering, but you'll probably be cheering louder!

If you don't match, others will often go, "Oh, good answer" — although it's clearly not a good answer since no one else wrote it — or the table will go silent, and you'll mock-grumpily go, "Wow, I thought that was gimme" or "I had no clue what to write", and others will commiserate with you because they've been in that same situation.

Bottom line: JinxO is about making human connection, and it does a good job facilitating that in various ways. One is in the discussions that erupt when someone says their answer is similar to the given one, then folks start debating, say, whether "pants" and "jeans" are the same thing (which our group voted was not the case). Are "tennis shoes" "sneakers"? Is a "jump" identical to a "leap" — or at least close enough to merit a circle?

A second form of connection is more internal. You write answers without knowing which topics will come next...but you do know what came before, and sometimes you can write an answer that fits both of them, such as when "Types of cereal" is followed by "Things that are round". Was Cheerios your fourth cereal choice, missing out on a spot on your board? Well, now you can honestly answer Cheerios for something that's round, potentially doubling your chances of having your round answer circled.

(I noticed this type of connection once again when recording the video below. I listed "Peanuts" as a well-known comic strip – but if the next topic were "Things you find on an airplane" or "Types of salty snacks", I would effectively have four answers in that category.)

While I was looking for images to accompany this post, I realized that you can play a second game of sorts with people who weren't at the original table. Looking at the image below, what do you think the topics were?


I could mix the three topic cards with others and have you guess, but I think it's more fun to look at the nine answers and try to make connections. I mean, that's why Codenames is so successful, right? Your mind is constantly making connections between one thing and another, sometimes in a harmful conspiratorial way, sure, but more often just in the process of being aware of the world and spotting things that make you go, "Oh, neat".

I show off a sampling of topic cards and break down the design a bit more in this video:

Youtube Video