Dixit

What it is

Dixit is a party game of imagination and intuition for three to six players, with nothing to read. It’s played with large illustrated cards, full of pictures that don’t mean anything in particular and can be read a thousand different ways.

Players take turns being the storyteller. The storyteller picks a card from their hand and describes it however they like: a sentence, a word, a proverb, even just a sound. Everyone else looks through their own hand for the card that best fits that description and hands it over face down. The cards are shuffled, revealed all together, and everyone votes for the one they think belongs to the storyteller.

The scoring is built to make life hard for whoever is telling the story. If everyone guesses the storyteller’s card, or nobody does, the storyteller scores nothing, so the trick is finding a clue somewhere in between, clear to some and obscure to others. The other players score too, both by guessing right and when someone votes for their card thinking it’s the real one. The first to thirty points wins.

How it plays

At our place Dixit comes out when there are new people at the table who know nothing about board games. It takes a minute to explain, there isn’t a single word on the cards and a game lasts about half an hour, so it works with anyone. All you need is a bit of imagination and a bit of nerve.

The nugget

In 2010 it won the Spiel des Jahres, the most important board game award, and since then a huge number of expansions with new cards have come out.

At our table

Got someone over for dinner who has never played anything? That’s when we bring out Dixit.

How long does Dixit take?

The box says 30 minutes. At our table: 30 minutes at six.

The box

Italian edition

Asmodee Italia

Text in the game

None

On BoardGameGeek

Dixit, 2008

Video tutorial

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