Knock Twice

At the end of the city's most chaotic street there is a door without a sign, without hours and without mercy. A doorman guards it, motionless and impeccable. To enter you need an Invitation with just one word, but the word alone is worthless: you must whisper the right Password, something the doorman deems significant. Hidden in the crowd is an undercover detective, listening to every attempt determined to uncover the secret before the others.

Each round one player is the Doorman and secretly connects a Password to the word on the Invitation card. The others split into Clients, who see the word and take turns making guesses, and a single Detective, who doesn't see the word and must reconstruct it solely from the Doorman's reactions. After each failed attempt the Doorman indicates on a five-level scale how close the guess was. Clients use that feedback to reach the Password, while the Detective silently builds a theory about the hidden word, testing it at fixed checkpoints during the round.

At stake are Cocktail tokens. Guessing the Password quickly earns Clients much, but the Doorman only scores high if the word resists for long: a good Doorman balances between too easy and too obscure. Whoever guesses becomes the new Doorman. Over four rounds the roles rotate continuously: whoever has the most Cocktail tokens at the end wins.