Charades with Cards (Mar 29 2026)

In which Our Hero reflects on reflecting. 

My family has been playing a card game for the last week.
Every day up til midnight or 1 or 2am.

One element I like: Mainly playing the game; not too much discussion/reflection about the game.
It’s a game where the point is to learn how to communicate intricate information without language.
Language & clear behavioral conventions therefore ruin it.

The topic has come up: what analysis/discussion is desirable, and what is not? 

Here’s my opinion and reasoning: 

The key is the novelty of information: 

• If someone does not know what a communication means, sharing its meaning is bad.
  • (The game is learning what communication means. Resolving that tension through clear information removes that learning.) 
• If someone does know what a communication means but made a logical mistake, pointing out this mental flaw is acceptable, but not necessary.
  • (If they know that 3 minus 2 is 1 and 4 minus 3 is 1, but they accidentally make a move that implies 3 minus 2 is 0 while 4 minus 3 is 2, pointing that out after the game doesn’t chip away at the value of the game while it does improve their mechanics.) 

In short, if a statement would be new information to someone, don’t tell them. If it would be old news but they made a mistake, tell them. 

Assumptions: 

• The game is about what I think the game is about. 
• One can accurately determine with a high degree of accuracy what others know.
• Even without others’ advice, each person can improve individually to a degree / with a speed that is satisfying for them 

And a final follow-up: 

• The game might be even better with no reflecting afterwards.
  • Maybe even the “this person already knows this but just made a mistake” is just too difficult to separate from “this person actually doesn’t know this thing”.
    • (Theory of mind is hard! Something I think that you know may be completely unknown to you… or the way I communicate something to you might change your entire psychological paradigm about the game. If the whole point is the communicative tension, keeping tension might be… …. … good!) 
  • Maybe the game itself being slow to improve is part of what will make it interesting for my family for time to come. (Often we will run into walls where we play a game for a while as a family, then lose interest and move onto another game. If we keep this game minimally-discussed, does that elongate the duration we enjoy it?) 
  • Perhaps the only time to reflect and dissect is therefore when NOT reflecting/dissecting would be intolerable. Like if someone says “I’m not having fun any more because I’m no longer growing. Can you do something to kick me off of my local maximum?” 

This ends JuJu’s analysis of a silly, fun activity.