The following are play instructions for Know, and educational card game.

Equipment

To play Know requires the following equipment:

• Blank Cards (or pieces of paper).
• Pens (not pencils).
• Teams (at least one player per Team).
• Source of Answers e.g Academic Textbooks.

Definitions

These are the definitions for terms used in Know:

• Answer Cards – A card that has written on it a Teams ID, their Answer and the Question number that the Answer Card is addressing.
• Point Pool – The number of points available to be won on a Question.
• Question Cards – A card that has written on it a Teams ID, their Question, and a unique Question Number.
• Question Prep – A round for preparing Questions.
• Question Round – A round for asking Questions and submitting Answers.
• Resolution – A round for marking the Answers to Questions.
• Round Deck – A collection of Answer and Questions Cards for a Question Round.
• Team ID – A secret identifier that is unique to each Team.

Game Phases

• ID.
• Question Prep.
• Question Round.
• Resolution.

ID

• Each Team gives themselves a secret Team ID. It can be anything but it must be unique. Since all Teams privately choose their Team ID its best to choose something others wouldn’t normally pick.
• Question Cards are given a unique number with numbers ranging from one to however many cards Teams wish to play with.

Question Prep

• Blank Question Cards are collected put face down, then shuffled.
• Keeping the Question Cards face down, Teams are given an equal number of blank Question Cards.
• Teams write one question onto each Question Card, and mark the Card with their Team ID.

Question Round

A Question Round in Know follows the following format:

• Teams privately submit a one of their Question Cards, which is put face down into the rounds Round Deck.
• Then each Team privately submits Ceiling(Number of Teams – 1 / 2) Answer Card(s) into the Round Deck

Example – If there are 6 Teams then (6 – 1 / 2) = 2.5.

Ceiling essentially means always round up so Ceiling(2.5) = 3.

Therefore Teams can submit 3 [itg-tooltip tooltip-content=”<p><strong style=&aquot;color: #141412; font-family: ‘Source Sans Pro’, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.8182px;&aquot;>Answer Cards</strong><span style=&aquot;color: #141412; font-family: ‘Source Sans Pro’, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.8182px;&aquot;> </span><strong style=&aquot;color: #141412; font-family: ‘Source Sans Pro’, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.8182px;&aquot;>-</strong><span style=&aquot;color: #141412; font-family: ‘Source Sans Pro’, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.8182px;&aquot;> </span><span style=&aquot;color: #141412; font-family: ‘Source Sans Pro’, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.8182px;&aquot;>A card that has written on it a Teams ID, their Answer and the Question number that the Answer Card is addressing.</span></p>”]Answer Cards[/itg-tooltip]  per round.

• The Round Deck is either put to one side or marked immediately (if so start Resolution for that Question Round).

Resolution

• When Resolving, ensure the Round Deck has been shuffled before revealing its cards.
• After revealing the cards match the Answers to their Questions Cards based on the written Question ID on the Answer Card.
• Then mark the answers keeping a public record of scores against Team ID’s.
• Marks are distributed as follows:

Each Question has a point pool of (Teams – 1) points available.

Example – If there are 6 teams then every question has (6 – 1) = 5 points available in its Point Pool.

Best answers receive an equal share of the point pool.

If points do not divide evenly into the number of winning Teams e.g 6 points 4 winners then each Team is awarded either the higher of 1 or the Floor(Available Points / Number of Winning Teams)

Example – If 5 points are available in the Point Pool and there are 2 Winning Teams then (5 / 2) = 2.5.

Floor essentially means always round down so Floor(2.5) = 2.

Therefore each Winning Team receives 2 points.

Rules

• For Answer Cards to be valid they must include the Question Number, Answer and Team ID.
• Teams cannot answer their own questions.
• If nobody has answered a question, then the question is put aside. Once all questions have been submitted by players these questions can be used to create more question rounds.

Recommendations

To be updated again after play testing!

For now when playing Know I suggest:

• Objective Questions are better because Subjective Questions are harder to mark.
• Submit to the answer of your agreed source of answers, if you want more sources of answers than one then this is fine as long as you all agree before hand.
• Try not to actively uncover the identities of Teams. The experience is better when players aren’t afraid of submitting answers. So to aide in this:
  • Keep handwriting in capitalized and un-stylized to try stay anonymous. Remember you might be the one who made an embarrassing mistake, and you would appreciate it if nobody pointed it out!
  • If you have multiple sources of answers, find each sources respective answer before scoring, as insisting the answer is in a certain source after marking is a way of that people may be able to uncover Team identities.
  • Don’t get too defensive about answers, people can tell that it was your answer if you do.