The final issue – though it’s unlikely to come up for me, since I tend to play with the same people – is that experience is a huge advantage. As soon as you know the three-point phrase for each clue, you can leap right there, freeing up precious time to grab more cards and more points before the timer runs out.

When one of your teammates say the correct word/phrase, say “yes”. You can repeat the correct word (even if it has multiple syllables), and can tell your teammates how many points that the word/phrase is worth. One Point Words During each round the Poet and Guesser try to score as many points as they can. At the end of the round you will add up the total number of points that the Poet and Guesser earned. These points will be added to the both players’ (Poet and Guesser) past scoring totals. Once you have a poet the timer is turned and they the poet starts giving clues to their team. The catch being that you can only use one syllable words - you are a cave person after all! If you use a word of more than one syllable the other teams can club you with the inflatable ‘NO’ club and you will lose points. You are allowed to say correct words once your team has said them though. So if the clue was sore eye and your team said ‘eye’ you could then start saying it too. Whilst we will do everything we can to meet the delivery times above, there may be factors outside of our control and we cannot guarantee delivery within this time frame. Reciting the poem has no impact on the scoring or outcome of the game. Therefore it is completely optional. Variant Games

Why this matters

This story is also an example of game developers (some who spent most of their careers in video games) using their ingenuity to design around a big problem: We can’t hand physical cards to each other during online calls. Lee spoke about this challenge with Theresa Duringer of Temple Gates Games at our recent GamesBeat Summit 2020 event. Avoid saying single words and then waiting for your team to guess! Instead, try speaking in Full sentences like the example above. The objective of Poetry for Neanderthals is to score more points than your opponents by successfully getting your teammates to guess words while only giving them one syllable clues. Setup for Poetry for Neanderthals Both players are on the same team and switch off being the Poet. Play with a single Point Slate. Any cards you skip count as -1 point. After each player has been the Poet three times, add up your points:

You can immediately go for the three point phrase and ignore giving clues for the one point word. If your teammates end up providing the one point answer, you can tell them that they guessed the right word for one point. You can then use the one point word as part of the clue for the three point phrase. Skipping A Card While the Poet is describing the word/phrase with one syllable words, one of their opponents sitting next to them is in charge of making sure that they aren’t breaking any of the rules listed above. We're not going to give you a lot of rules here... but as you aggressively debate about personal pronunciation, accents, and that one rule about syllables you learned in school, please try to remember that this is just a game, and really probably not that important. Me like game. You will like game. Say word to make you get word. See? Good. Any game that comes with an inflatable club in it is already onto a winner. Poetry for Neanderthals is a word game take on other style word games with some interesting twists on the guessing formula.

You Can't

Take a "Grok's Words of Love and Sad" Card at random and decide which of your three chosen cards to insert into the three blanks (you can use either the 1-point words or the 3-point phrases). If there are only two or three players you will have to slightly tweak some of the Poetry for Neanderthals rules to play the game. Two Players

They were hoarding” the prototypes, Lee said. “The videos showed them laughing hysterically. I wouldn’t go all the way to say this is an essential service, but here we are giving them a toolset to hang out, and to laugh, and enjoy themselves — all the things that are so hard to do during quarantine.” Everyone on your team can shout out words at the same time when trying to guess the word or phrase.

Game Play

Next, discard all the used Poetry Cards from both slates into the box, rotate each player's role, and start the next round. The two players are playing on the same team. The goal of the game is for the two players to score as many points as possible. The same goes for Poetry for Neanderthals. The goal is to score the most points by correctly interpreting words and phrases. The chosen Poet starts off the game with a Poetry Card and tries to get their teammates to say the listed word, using only words with one syllable within a 90-second time limit. The winning team chooses three of the their favorite words/phrases that they guessed during the game. They will then randomly draw one of the Grok’s Words of Love and Sad Cards. They will choose how to place the three words/phrases they chose into the blanks on the card. One of the players will then recite the poem to the other team. Team Glad choose these three cards from those they scored during the game. They will end up creating the following poem. Team Glad starts the game. They will choose who on their team with be the first Neanderthal Poet. This player places the Poet Point Slate in front of themselves.