I have played the game once, it became a timing calibration game the way Alexei describes, and I second his account that it felt amazing rather than uninteresting.
I might put it as something like—while the explicit rule is that communication is banned, the point is not to actually ban all communication. Rather it is to move to a more interesting form of communication, where you are incentivized to really pay attention to the other players, and shift into a form of wordless flow. To use a physical analogy, you go from walking side to side (normal speech) to dancing together (playing The Mind).
I have played the game once, it became a timing calibration game the way Alexei describes, and I second his account that it felt amazing rather than uninteresting.
I might put it as something like—while the explicit rule is that communication is banned, the point is not to actually ban all communication. Rather it is to move to a more interesting form of communication, where you are incentivized to really pay attention to the other players, and shift into a form of wordless flow. To use a physical analogy, you go from walking side to side (normal speech) to dancing together (playing The Mind).