How to play Word Assassins

Word Assassins is the party game where everyone is hunting someone, and everyone is being hunted, and nobody can talk about it. Each player gets a secret target and a secret word. Get your target to say your word in normal conversation and they're out. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person, and you are.

It runs quietly underneath real life (a dinner, a trip, a semester) and turns ordinary small talk into a minefield. Here are the complete rules, whether you're playing with an app or a hat full of paper slips.

What you need

• Three or more players. Three works, six is lively, and past ten it becomes the only thing anyone talks about. The people need to actually see each other: same house, same trip, same office. The game runs on conversation, so it needs conversation to happen.
• A secret word for each player: an ordinary, say-able word. More on choosing them below.
• A circle of targets, so every player hunts exactly one person and is hunted by exactly one person.

Setup

Arrange every player in one big secret circle: A hunts B, B hunts C, C hunts D, and the last player hunts A. Nobody should know the order; that's the whole tension. Then deal every player one secret word.

On paper, that means writing names on slips, shuffling them into a loop, and having someone who isn't playing deal words. In the Coax app, you make a lobby, friends join with a six-letter code, and the chain and the words deal themselves when the host presses start. Either way, each player ends up knowing exactly two secrets: who they're hunting and what word that person must say.

How you eliminate someone

You have to make your target say your word (out loud or in the chat, both count) without them realizing they were steered into it. You can't just ask “say ‘sunscreen’.” The art is engineering a conversation where the word falls out of them naturally:

• Your word is passport → start a story about almost missing a flight.
• Your word is leftovers → ask what happened to last night's takeout.
• Your word is ring → mention you lost something at the gym, and wait.

When it lands, you call it: “you just said my word.” The elimination is confirmed on trust; the victim knows what they said. In the app you hold to confirm and the elimination goes out to the game; on paper you announce it to the group.

Inheritance: why the game tightens

When you eliminate your target, you inherit two things: their target and their word. The circle closes by one, and you're immediately hunting someone new. This is what gives the game its shape: it starts as a wide, lazy loop and collapses inward until two people are left hunting each other, each knowing the other is close.

The one rule about lying

You can bluff about everything except the kill itself. Deny you're hunting anyone. Claim your word is something it isn't. Fake being eliminated, if you can pull it off. The only sacred thing is the elimination: if you got someone, it counts; if you didn't, it doesn't. That part runs on honor, which is why the game is best with people you'll still be sitting next to tomorrow.

Ending the game

The classic ending is last one standing. For a game with a natural deadline (a weekend trip, a wedding reception), set a time limit up front and count eliminations: when time runs out, the player with the most is the winner. The app tracks both automatically and hands out the aftermath (who got whom, with which word) when it ends.

Common questions

What if someone says their own word by accident?

Nothing. The word only matters when your hunter is the reason you said it. Their word in your mouth is noise; your word in your mouth is fatal only to you.

Can I refuse to admit I said it?

You can try, and your group will remember. The honest version of this rule: if it was said, it counts. Adjudicate disputes as a table, once, loudly, and move on.

What do eliminated players do?

The best part: they become the audience. They know secrets, they gossip, they mislead. In Coax they drop into a live feed of the game and watch the rest play out with full information.

How long should a game run?

With everyone in one room, an evening. Spread across ordinary life, a week is the sweet spot: long enough for paranoia to set in, short enough that nobody forgets they're playing.

Variants worth knowing

• Free-for-all: no chain; get anyone to say your word, then draw a fresh one. Add extra lives so one slip isn't the end. (In Coax this is Battle Royale.)
• Sniping: players may guess the exact word someone is hunting them with. Right, and the hunter is out; wrong, and the guesser is. (Always on in Coax's Blitz mode.)
• The big-venue version: one gathering, everyone in, eliminations proven with a code handoff and a live scoreboard on a projector. (That's Apocalypse, built for weddings and retreats. It isn't part of the subscription — it's an event we set up with the organiser.)