The game consists of three phases: The set up phase, the night phase and the day phase.
In the set up phase, each player receives a card, a die, and a hat. Everyone rolls their die, hides it under the hat, and places everything in front of them (see illustration). Place the paper on the middle of the table. The rolled number and the identity is secret for each player. Do not share this information!
During the night phase, all players close their eyes. They may only open their eyes to wake up (the number rolled indicates the time at which each player wakes up). One player announces aloud: "It is now one o'clock, everybody waking up at one o'clock, open your eyes." and, after short while: "Everybody waking up at one o'clock, close your eyes.", before moving on to the next hour. This process is repeated from 1 o'clock to 6 o'clock.
When you wake up, there are three possibilities:
- If you are Cantor, you must steal the paper lying on the center of the table. (You are not allowed to do anything else.) - If you are not Cantor and wake up alone, you may sneak peek somebody elses die roll. - If you are not Cantor and don't wake up alone, you make eye contact with that other person and are not allowed to look at another die roll.
The goal of the night phase for all players who are not Cantor is to gather information. All players except Cantor will learn when someone else has woken up, but they must also keep a fundamental question in mind: Was the paper still there when I woke up?
At the end of the night, Cantor is allowed to choose a helping hand. The player who is Cantor does so by tapping another player's shoulder. This is also announced by a player: "Cantor, tap on another player's shoulder." and a bit later "Helping hand, open your eyes and make eye contact with Cantor."
With this, the night phase finishes and the day phase starts. All player open their eyes and have now 4 minutes to discuss what happened during the night. Players can share information they gathered or ask for information. The goal of the discussion phase is to identify who stole the paper, i.e. who Cantor is. The goal of Cantor and his helping hand is to remain unnoticed. During the day phase it is not allowed to share your own identity.
At the end of the discussion all players point at the player they think is Cantor. The player who is voted out reveals their identity. If it is not Cantor, Cantor and his helping hand wins, if it is Cantor, everybody else wins.
Additional rules
The rules as stated above represent the base game. We recommend trying out the base game variant many times before moving on to more complex versions of the game. The first instances the base game is played, players learn about the basic dynamics of the game, before they move on to learn about different methods Cantor has to lie and create worlds that might allow him to remain unnoticed. Once this is explored, player can move on to additional rules.
The additional rules are stated on the identity cards. We recommend to add the additional rules as follows.
1) Cantor: Cantor's rules are in fact mandatory in the base game and remain valid in all other variants.
2) Dedekind: Dedekind also wins if he votes for Cantor in the morning, regadless of whether the majority voted for him or not. (This additional rule is particularly interesting if many rounds of the games are played and people count the amount of wins.)
3) Noether: Noether wins, if, after the vote, she reveals her role and correctly guesses who Dedekind is. (Noether has to pay particular attention to how all players behave during the day phase.)
4) Cavaillès: Before the morning, Cavaillès learns who Noether is. (He is, however, not allowed to share this information with other players.)
5) Kronecker: Kronecker wins if he is the most voted player. In this case, everybody else looses. (Be suspicious of overly suspicious players!)
6) Weierstrass: In the day phase, the debate lasts one mintue longer.
7) Fraenkel: Fraenkel is a second helping hand to Cantor, but does not know who Cantor is. Fraenkel may reveal his role, select a player, and silence them for the remainder of the debate. (Fraenkel can choose to reveal his role, which eliminates a Cantor candidate to the group, but can silence someone, may it be because they are pushing towards the right direction, or to just misdirect attention. His main power resides in his ability to distract and make the group loose time.)
We recommend to start using the additional rules step by step, game after game, and not all of them together.
