Cluzzle

About this board game

Cluzzle is a deduction game for 3–6 players that takes about 45 minutes, in which everyone creates an ambiguous clay sculpture and then tries to identify the other players’ creations.

At the start of the game, each player makes a personal clay puzzle called a Cluzzle. The goal is not to sculpt a perfect object. Instead, you want to create something that is difficult enough to keep others guessing while still being possible to solve.

For the rest of the game, players investigate one another’s sculptures by asking “Yes or No” questions, in the style of 20 questions. Each answer provides another clue as players work toward figuring out what the puzzling shapes are meant to represent.

• Make an ambiguous clay sculpture.
• Ask yes-or-no questions to uncover the other puzzles.
• Earn more points when your Cluzzle takes longer to solve—but only if someone identifies it before the game ends.

This scoring creates the game’s central balance: a sculpture should be unclear, but not so mysterious that nobody can solve it. The result is a humorous challenge where artistic skill is not required and anyone can win.

Designed for friends and family, Cluzzle turns deliberately poor sculpting into a source of laughter and memorable guesses. Its 2004 release was modeled after Klaus Teuber’s 1988 game Barbarossa. Personalized Cluzzle Cards were also created by Alanis Morissette, Alan Moon, Stephen Glenn, Tom Vasel, and others, with the personal meaning of their chosen objects explained on the North Star Games website.