Eulogy 5.3: Montage

by Peter Sarrett, in TGR 5.3 (#19), Summer/Fall/Winter 1998

Long-time TGR readers know of my predilection for word games. Big Boggle has held a spot in my top ten for years and has long been my favorite word game. But this past April something dislodged it. And it’s not even a new game. At this year’s Gathering I was introduced to Montage, a twenty year old gem from Prince Joli Kansil and Gamut of Games. Frankly, I haven’t been impressed by the rest of the prince’s oeuvre. , for example, (the card/backgammon hybrid, not the Stefan Dorra shopkeeping game) sounded intriguing but proved rather thin in practice. Bridgette is perhaps his best-known game, and while it’s a credible two-player adaptation of bridge it failed to hold my interest long, even at the height of my bridge phase. Montage, however, is nothing short of brilliant.

The board is a 15x15 grid, subdivided into a big Tic-Tac-Toe board of 5x5 squares. Puzzle enthusiasts will recognize 15x15 as a common size for crossword puzzles, which is what Montage simulates. A nice touch is that the board isn’t preprinted with a single pattern. Instead, players seed the board with black chips according to one of the nine layouts the game suggests, thus creating a crossword grid. The board is also seeded with a few of the colored chips which lie at the heart of Montage’s system.

The chips come in five colors, each of which represents a group of five (in one case, six) letters of the alphabet. A chip can represent any of the letters in its color. The same yellow chip that was an A in a word across might be a C in a word down. Let’s take a step back.

Montage is played in partnerships. When it’s a player’s turn, he points to a spot on the board representing a word in the puzzle. The player offers up a crossword-style clue of five words or less which describes a word which fits in the indicated position. To fit, a word has to be the right length and must use a letter pattern matching the chips already on the board. For example, a four-letter word with a yellow chip as the first letter must begin with A, B, C, D, or Z. Possible clues might be “Schoolhouse Rock hero” (ZERO), “Pointy projectile made by Dodge?” (DART), or “Back in Black rock group” (ACDC).

When a player thinks he knows the answer, he knocks on the table. If both opponents knock before the clue-giver’s partner does, one of them can take a guess. But if the partner beats just one of the opponents to the knock, he gets to guess instead. An answer doesn’t have to be the one the clue-giver had in mind, as long as it fits the board and the clue.

The knock system is a very slick way to work around the lack of a lock-out buzzer, particularly thanks to the simultaneity rule. If all three guessers knock more-or-less simultaneously, the guess goes to the opposition. This balances the advantage of the clue-giver’s partner, but even more ingeniously it discourages overly simple clues. I think this rule is why Montage works so beautifully. Players need to devise clever clues which they think their partner will get but which will elude opponents.

When an answer is given, it’s “written” onto the board by placing chips of the proper colors for the word’s letters. Each chip has a light side and a dark side- which one is used depends on which partnership won the word. A wrong guess gives the word to the other team, and nothing gets filled in at all if nobody gets the answer in time. Did I mention the time limit? A player has one minute to execute the entirety of his turn starting from the moment he’s handed the pointer. The more time he spends thinking about where to point and what clue to give, the less time everyone has to guess.

When a Tic-Tac-Toe square contains ten chips in one partnership’s orientation (light or dark), that teams wins the square. The first to get Tic-Tac-Toe, or five out of the nine squares, wins. A longer game with an alternate scoring system is also available. To date I haven’t tried it, but I look forward to doing so.

What I dig about Montage is that it’s not a game about who can find the most words quickly, or who’s memorized lists of short obscure words. It’s a game about being clever. It encourages players to be creative, and it’s tremendously satisfying to craft a brilliant clue and watch the lights go on as other people figure it out. The danger lies in being too clever by half and shooting your cryptic gem right over everyone’s head. Striking the right balance between familiarity and obscurity is the fun of Montage. This is a word game unlike any other, and more’s the pity. We need more fresh ideas- 20 years old though it is- like this.