Game Review: Just One
The party game Just One is fun and helps develop skills in word choice.
Does a game review even belong here. Yes. This game is social, fun, and helps in the development of word-choice skills.
Description
Just One is a cooperative party game but it can be played at the table. It is recommended for those 8-years old or up. The suggested numb er of players is 3-7, but I like 5-9 better. The 8th and 9th players might need a sticky note pack and a pencil. You can keep score, but I have seen it played with a simply a group sense of accomplishment.
This might be the easiest interesting game to get into. Board Game Geek gives it a complexity rating of 1.04/5.
A play time of 20 minutes is estimated. Yeah, well that is if you play by the rules. I think it is easy to quit after any round or even extend rounds.
The game is well liked. BGG places it at #3 in today's Party Game Rank. The all-games Geek Rating is 7.6 which seems to be at the 99.96 percentile rank. It is easy for the number of players to change between rounds.
It has won several awards including the 2019 Spiel des Jahres.
Designers are Ludovic Roudy and Bruno Sautter. The artists are Éric Azagury and Florian Poulet.
There are no expansions that I have seen.
Play
One person draws a card showing five words facing outward. That person calls out a number 1-5 indication the word the rest of the players must communicate to that the person central to that round.
Each of the other players writes down a hint word in private. They then huddle and duplicate words are removed. Those left are then presented to the one holding the card and that person tries to figure out what that word is. If the person holding the card can figure out what the word is based on the one-word hint, celebrate!
Word Choice
This where the game ties in. An important part of fruitful dialog is choosing the right words. This game is a fun exercise in that which allows players to understand each other better.
The number of players make a difference in the choice. With a large number of players there is the greater chance of words clashing and being removed. However, there is an opportunity to consider fellow players in deciding the kind of hint.
Word choice involves selecting a hint that is not the common synonym and must consider word senses.
Playing this game improves our ability to select the right word in a cooperative manner.
Background
The brainy ones back this up.
Shared Common Ground
A core finding in dialogue research (communication theory, psycholinguistics) is that successful understanding isn’t just about transmitting information; it’s about grounding—building mutual belief that you understood each other well enough for the task. That pushes word choice toward terms you expect are in the overlap of everyone’s knowledge.
Concept Pacts and Label Convergence
From psycholinguistics has shown that conversation partners quickly settle into preferred labels for things (“lexical entrainment”) and keep using them because they’re efficient for that partner/group, even if other labels are equally valid.
Tailored Words vs Egocentric Words
We tend towards the egocentric words without realizing it. The game is training for finding the listener's perspective.
Other
Studies have shown the importance of these: cognitive load on word choice, fluency, nudging words, abstract/concrete choices, the neurological cost of integrating meaning with context.
Just One
Mouth Fruit recommends this game of word choices. This is the revised version in English.
View on Amazon
Just One
Das Spiel enthält sowohl deutsche Anweisungen als auch deutsche Wörter auf den Karten.
View on Amazon