How to Play Dixit: Rules, Scoring and Giving the Right Clue

Dixit is an association game played with illustrated cards. It takes 3 to 6 players and comes alive between four and six, because voting only means something when there are enough decoy cards on the table.

Each player holds 6 picture cards. Players take turns as storyteller: you pick one card from your hand, place it face down, and give a clue for it.

Once the clue has been said, everyone else chooses a card from their own hand that they think fits it and passes it to the storyteller. All the cards are shuffled and revealed, and everyone except the storyteller votes for the card they believe was theirs.

The whole design of Dixit sits in its scoring. The storyteller only scores when some — not all — of the players find their card.

If nobody finds it, or if everybody does, the storyteller scores zero and every other player takes 2 points. That single rule is what forces a clue to sit between obvious and impossible.

When some players find it, the storyteller and each correct guesser take 3 points. On top of that, every player collects 1 point for each vote their own decoy attracted.

The aim isn't to be incomprehensible, it's to be selective. The clue has to reach some people at the table and miss others.

An obvious clue — "red balloon" — leads everyone to the right card and scores the storyteller nothing. An impenetrable one — "melancholy" — leads nobody there and scores exactly the same.

The clues that work tend to split the room: a lyric, an idiom, a reference only part of the group shares.

Non-storytellers have a strategy too: the closer your submitted card sits to the clue, the more votes it attracts, and every vote is a point.

But a card that fits too well is risky. If your decoy matches the clue better than the storyteller's own card, you pull the table away entirely and the turn ends with nobody guessing right — which pays everyone 2 points including the storyteller.

Three is the minimum but it weakens the voting: only two decoys reach the table and a guess becomes close to a coin flip.

Between four and six the game becomes what it was designed to be. With more players a clue has to reach more people, which makes the storyteller's job harder and spreads the scoring more evenly.

What makes Dixit work is that everyone reads the same clue differently and then talks about it afterwards. The real entertainment isn't in the cards, it's in the "how on earth did you get that from this" conversation.

That conversation doesn't require a box: a question deck on a phone also passes round the table with nothing to set up. They aren't the same game — one produces association, the other conversation directly. But after a round of Dixit the table is already talking, and questions land naturally there. Best Liar Wins suits people who like bluffing; The Gossip Pot is built for rounds where a group talks about each other.