Montage

About this board game

Montage is a partnership word game for exactly four players, with a listed play time of 60 minutes. Released in 1973, it challenges partners to communicate through words, clues, and a distinctive color-coded grid.

On each turn, a player secretly thinks of a word and “spells” it on the crossword-like grid using colored tiles. Each color represents one vowel along with five or six consonants, creating a visual pattern that the other players must interpret.

• Choose a word and place its letters on the grid.
• Use the tile colors to encode the word.
• Give a clue and hope your partner guesses it first.

The clue-giver’s goal is to help their partner identify the word before either opponent does. Every turn therefore combines word selection, coded spelling, and clue-giving, while the opposing players listen for their chance to solve the word themselves.

The color system groups letters together in unusual ways. For example, yellow can correspond to A, B, C, D, and Z, while green can correspond to U, T, V, W, Y, and X. These associations make the arrangement of tiles an essential part of each word puzzle.

With its partnership format and crossword-like presentation, Montage centers on shared understanding rather than simply revealing a word. Players must make a clue distinctive enough for their teammate while avoiding an easy opening for the opponents.

In 1992, Joli Quentin Kansil revived the idea behind Montage in ¡Knock-on-Word!, a similar partnership word-guessing game.