How to survive as the spy, and how to catch one.
Your job is not to be invisible. It is to be unremarkable. A player who says nothing for six minutes is the first person the table votes for, every time.
The first answer to any question has nothing to lean on. Let someone else establish the ground — once you have heard one real answer, you know roughly what register to match. If you are asked first, buy a beat: "That's a weird one to answer…" is a complete sentence that costs you nothing.
The safest answers reuse a detail someone else already volunteered, tilted slightly. If a player says it is loud, you can say the noise is the part you would complain about. You have added nothing and sounded like you were there.
Facts can be wrong. Opinions cannot. "I'd rather be at home" is unfalsifiable. "It's usually about twenty pounds" is a coin flip you might lose in front of everyone.
Spies who only answer look passive. Ask your own questions — and ask ones whose answers help you. "What's the worst part?" is excellent for a spy: it is a normal question, and the reply is usually rich in detail.
If you are named and about to be voted out, guess. You have nothing to lose. If you are safe and only half sure, wait — a wrong guess is the fastest way to end your own round.
This is the whole skill. You need the table to believe you, without teaching the spy anything. The move is to answer with something true but oblique: a feeling, a small irritation, a memory. Not a description.
If the word is "airport", then "I always end up there far too early" proves you know it. "There are long queues and you have to show your passport" hands it over.
Track who is establishing and who is agreeing. Over a full round, citizens tend to volunteer new detail. Spies tend to reframe detail that already exists. That pattern is more reliable than any single suspicious answer.
The strongest pressure comes from building on someone's own answer. If they said it is loud, ask what the noise actually is. A citizen has an answer ready. A spy has to invent one on top of an invention.
Naming a suspect early tells the spy exactly who they need to discredit — and gives everyone else an anchor they will drift toward. Hold your read until you would actually vote on it.
Point on a count of three. Sequential voting is how a confident spy talks a table out of a correct read.
And one that is not worth trusting: nervousness. Some people are just like that.
Say less than you think you need to, answer late rather than first, and build every answer out of what someone else has already said. Most spies are caught for overexplaining, not for being quiet.
Ask questions that require specific, unpromptable detail, and watch who answers only after hearing someone else. Track who has volunteered a concrete fact and who has only agreed.
A little, but not silently. Total silence is itself a tell. Aim to be the third or fourth most talkative person in the room.
Proving they know the word by describing it. You convince the table and hand the spy the answer in the same sentence.
Only if you are confident or about to be voted out. A wrong early guess ends your round; a correct one wins it even after you are caught.