Logical Spies

You are a cunning and dastardly spy. Deny it, you scoundrel! Your fellow players are too, each with allegiance to a different country. Use your skills of logic and observation to discover the other spies’ identities and expose them before they expose you. The winner is the last remaining spy.

SETUP
Separate the cards by suit. Shuffle each suit separately. Deal 1 card of each suit to each player. Keep unused cards hidden throughout play. The set of cards that a player receives represents her spy identity. Each player should take note of their identity, by marking this information on their logic sheet. Players should hide information on their logic sheet, by folding the sheet in half.

GAME PLAY
The game is played in a series of rounds. Each round begins with Spying and finishes with Accusations.

SPYING
Players place their all cards from their hand face down in the middle. The dealer shuffles these cards together. The dealer deals out 1 face down pile in front of each player. Players may NOT look at the cards yet.

When the dealer signals “begin”, players simultaneously use 1 hand only, to find and retrieve their identity cards, as fast as they can. To do this, players look at 1 card at a time from the pile in front of them (if there are no cards in front of a player, the player may draw from a different pile). If a drawn card is part of the player’s identity, the player recovers it, stashing it in the crease of her folded logic sheet. If not, the player places it face down on the top of another player’s pile. The player repeats the process, until she has recovered all the cards of her identity. The player must immediately stop spying once her identity is recovered.

While spying, players should pay attention to what other players are doing. They will use these observations to make accusations.

ACCUSATIONS
After all players have retrieved their identities, they may make accusations. The player to the left of the dealer accuses first. When a player accuses someone, she points to another player and says something like “You are the Russian spy.” The accused player must declare that the accusation is true or false. If true, then the accused must expose that card in front of herself, and leave it face up for the rest of the game. A player may make repeated accusations, until she makes a false accusation.

When each player has had a turn accusing, players place their remaining unexposed cards into a pile in the middle. The deal shifts to the left, and the next round begins.