Hooky, designed by James Miller and published by Rio Grande Games, is a particular kind of board game that doesn’t announce itself loudly. It doesn’t arrive with miniatures the size of your fist or a sprawling board that requires its own postcode. A game with simple and clear art that makes you think this is a game just for younger players, but they would be wrong.
At first glance, Hooky looks like a word game. That alone is enough to make some players sit up with interest, and others quietly begin searching for the nearest exit. Fun fact, I am one of those looking for the exit. Or at least, I was.
The thing is, describing Hooky as just a word game is a bit like describing chess as a game about moving shapes. Technically true, but also kind of missing the point. Hooky is actually a deduction engine disguised as a vocabulary exercise. And once it gets going, it’s quite absorbing, but it can be mentally taxing.
It’s relatively easy to play on its surface: at the beginning of the game, players are each given a set of letter cards drawn from the alphabet, the number of cards you get is dependent on player count. Crucially, not all letters are in play. Three letters are removed from the game entirely, unseen by anyone. These are the “students playing hooky”— the absent letters that give the game its name (I still can’t decide if I like the name or not).
From that moment on, everything in Hooky revolves around figuring out what those three missing letters are.
You know your own letters. You do not know what other players have. You do not know which letters are missing. So the key to Hooky is to tease the information out of the players through a series of very careful questions. This is where I feel the game is perfect for adults, but the ‘kids’ theme of the game didn’t sit great. But I digress, at least for now.
On your turn in Hooky, you form a five-letter word. This must be a legitimate word — no creative liberties or convenient abbreviations (think Scrabble) — and it becomes your query to the table. You then choose one opponent, who must respond with a single number between zero and five, a lot like guessing a Wordle. The number represents how many letters from your word they hold in their hand. That’s all you get. No indication of which letters match, no additional hints, no wiggle room. Just a number.
If you say “PLANE” and they say “two”, you know that they have exactly two of those letters. Some combination of P, L, A, N and E, but not which ones. Importantly, every other player gets to listen to this as well, information in Hooky is shared, whether you like that or not.
From there, the game becomes a tightening logic web. Each answer intersects with the previous answers and each word you or others plays creates new possibilities, new deductions. Over time, you will begin to map what the other players have, and what is missing from the current play.
In Hooky, it’s those hints at what is missing that you need to keep your brain locked on to. If a letter consistently fails to appear, if no one seems to have it, despite a few probing questions, then perhaps that is one of the kids playing Hooky (maybe the name is growing on me now).
On your turn, instead of asking a question, you can make a guess. You can say what three letters you believe are missing from the game. If you are correct, congratulations, you get to score some points. But, if you are wrong, you suffer a penalty. You are not eliminated though, which is good, as games with player elimination should be avoided. Hooky is not a race to the finish, it’s about accumulating points over time. I feel the same way about Flip 7, so the timing of your guesses becomes as important as making them.
Hooky can be summed up like this: Ask, listen, deduce, and decide when to commit. This is not a breezy word game. It is a thinking game, first and foremost. Each turn presents a small but meaningful puzzle: what word do you choose? Do you aim for maximum information, selecting letters that test multiple hypotheses at once? Or do you play something more obscure, something that might yield useful data for you while revealing less to others?
Because that’s the other key tension in Hooky: every question helps everyone. This leads to one of its greatest strengths: Engagement.
Even when it’s not your turn, you are very much involved. Every word played, every number given, is a piece of the puzzle. If you tune out, even briefly, a single glance at your phone, or a handful of crisps nommed on, you risk missing a crucial piece of info, or note a deduction from another player that unlocks something for you. The game demands attention, which I admit, might not work for all game groups, but in return, it offers a deeply satisfying sense of progression as the fog slowly lifts and the pieces fall into place.
When everything clicks, it is VERY satisfying, as long as you can get to that point before another player. When a previously ambiguous clue suddenly makes sense. When a letter you were unsure about becomes certain. When the list of possibilities narrows, and you realise you’re close.
Those are the highs of Hooky, and they are genuinely solid and rewarding. However, I did not feel that Hooky, despite its outward appearance, was a light game. The rules are easy, but it’s the simple amount of brain power you need to play the game that makes it a potentially tough sell. Keeping track of multiple overlapping clues, remembering who said what about which word, and integrating that information into a coherent model of the game state can be demanding.
For some players, this will be the appeal. For others, it may feel like work. I still cannot decide if this is a warm up game, or if it’s a game to play after a warm up game but still before a bigger game. The fact that I struggle to place it, makes me wonder what is the target audience for Hooky. There is also the question of pacing. Hooky is not slow, exactly, but it is deliberate. Turns require thought, and while that thought is usually productive, it can lead to pauses, especially with players prone to analysis paralysis. In a group that embraces the puzzle, this isn’t an issue. In a more casual setting, it might drag.
Those potential negatives aside, Hooky has a clean design that delivers its core game well. There is no excess, no extra bells and whistles to distract. It is, at its core, a very simple game that is made complex by the players themselves. Small actions, but big stakes. It rewards patience, attention, and cleverness. It asks you to engage with it fully, to lean into its puzzle, you must give it all your attention if you want to come close to winning.
If you and your friends can do that, it offers a very satisfying experience—one where every number matters, every word counts, and every deduction brings you one step closer to uncovering what’s missing. Which of those kids are playing Hooky?
