DECIPHER
The strange offspring of hangman and Mastermind
Designer: Bill Eberle, Peter Olotka, Greg Olotka | Publisher: Heidelbär
D
ecipher is a game with some history behind it. In 1981 the team of Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge and Peter Olotka, best known for the beloved sci-fiadaptation Dune, released Runes. A word game with a clever twist, it handed players a collection of plastic pieces in a variety of lines and curves, challenging them to form words by fitting them together to make letters. In 2019 it returned in a refined and polished form under the title of Wordsmith. And now it’s inspired a new game taking its word-building formula in a very different direction.