Along comes Cryptid. Players are each cryptozoologists, trying to locate a fanciful creature (think Yeti, Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, or such). The board is a map made of interlocking pieces, with several wooden markers adding landmarks. The elusive creature is out there somewhere, on one specific hex of the map among dozens. Each player has a single clue to that location -- "it's in a desert or mountain space," "it's within two spaces of a green marker," "it's within one space of water," and so forth.
Your job is to probe at your opponents' information and collate it with yours. On each of your turns, you pick another player and propose a hex on the map: "could the creature be here?" That player must respond truthfully, according to their clue, whether the creature could be in the proposed location. If the answer is "no," then you must also reveal something, marking a location on the map where you know the creature also cannot be. Around the table you go, eliminating options, until one player is able to deduce the single hex on the map that no player's clue can disprove. That's it! You've discovered the creature!
There's an interesting element of evasion at work in Cryptid. The biggest moment of strategy in the game comes when, after having been refuted in one of your questions, you too must reveal information. What do you think your opponents know? What space can you eliminate that gives away nothing more than you've already given?
The deduction works on multiple levels. Ultimately, you're trying to find the mysterious creature, but to do that, you're going to have to deduce what piece of information each other player knows. What can you gather from the questions your opponents are asking? What do the elimination tokens they've place suggest?
Unfortunately, Cryptid struck me as more fascinating from a design angle than as a player. The game comes with hundreds of puzzles, each carefully crafted for 3, 4, or 5 players. It's quite a feat that the same board pieces and wooden markers can be reconstituted in so many ways that all work. There's always exactly one right answer, only one space that isn't eliminated by the clues given to the players. I'd love to see the documents and tools used to build the puzzles.
But after a handful of games, it has always felt to me that the puzzle unravels almost randomly each time. There's a theoretical role for deduction here, but each game seems to come down to a moment when someone happens to ask the question that breaks it all open. That player doesn't even usually win -- Player A causes key information to be revealed, in then Player B or C wins because of it, before Player A gets another turn.
It's also disappointingly easy to mix up the clue giving. The first game I ever played fell apart when one of the other players realized they'd answered an earlier question incorrectly. The second time I ever played, I nearly messed it all up, nearly giving wrong information before catching myself. The third game went off without a hitch, but the fourth almost went wrong too -- though in correcting misinformation, one player actually revealed extra information that brought the game to a faster conclusion.
I've tried Cryptid now with a few different mixes of players, but no one has had a truly enthusiastic response to it. So at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if I don't ever end up playing it again. And I'm not terribly broken up about that; there are plenty of other deduction games I enjoy much more. I'd grade Cryptid a C.
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