taylom.me station ····

Codespeak

Nine agents in the field and one radio. Send one word and a number. The operative on the other end works out who you meant.

01 · TRANSMITOne word, one number. The word can't be on the table, and it can't point at spelling or sound — a censor listens in.
02 · THE OPERATIVE READSJev weighs every code name still face down and knocks on doors in that order, as many as you asked for.
03 · GET THEM ALL OUTA wrong door ends the transmission. The other side wins the race, and the mole ends the war for you.

Two teams, one station

Up to eight operators on the same base, split into orange and green. Everyone sees the whole table and every read, yours and theirs; the key passes down each team in turn. First side to get all of theirs out wins — unless somebody's word sends the operative to the mole.

or
Code name pool
Operative's nerve
Table
enter

Mission briefing

Twenty-five code names lie on the table. Nine belong to one side, eight to the other, seven are bystanders who know nothing, and one is a mole. Every operator in the room can see which is which. Your operative, out in the field, cannot.

You send one word and a number — "harbor, 3". The operative reads the table, ranks every code name still face down, and knocks on that many doors, best first. One of yours keeps the transmission alive. A bystander or one of theirs ends it. The mole ends everything.

The operative is Jev, a model from TypeSafe that never writes text. Give it something to read and a list of options and it answers with a probability for each one, in about 200 milliseconds. So the percentage you see next to every door it opens is real: that is exactly how strongly it felt the pull, and it will refuse to move on a name that is barely above a coin flip.

On a station, up to eight of you work the same table as orange and green teams, taking the key in turn. Send a word that pulls too wide and you hand doors to the other side. Each side gets two channel tests — a read with nothing sent — and the whole room watches the answer, including the team you are trying to beat.

Named for the Allied code talkers of the Second World War — Navajo, Comanche, Choctaw and others — whose Marine Corps units carried messages in a language the other side could not break. The game borrows the idea of a channel nobody else can read, and nothing else. Any resemblance to their actual work is the game's invention.

Read about Jev