The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/finish-line-blues).
**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.
**Craig Mazin:** Okay, okay, my name is Craig Mazin.
**John:** This is Episode 562 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, good lord, it’s a hodgepodge.
**Craig:** Hodgepodge.
**John:** We’ll be discussing animation, short films, post scriptum depression, parallel stories, persistence, and the Monty Hall problem.
**Craig:** Oh good, we’re back to that.
**John:** Some of those are listener questions. Some are just things we’re encountering in the world. Some are follow-up on a Bonus Segment, which is kind of cheating, but that’s okay, because this is our show.
**Craig:** Yeah, it’s our show. We can do whatever we want, and also aforementioned hodgepodge.
**John:** It’s a hodgepodge. Craig, what will we do in our Bonus Segment?
**Craig:** In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, we’re going to discuss the terrific board game Codenames. I don’t know if I would call it a board game. I would call it a party game.
**John:** It’s a party game, but party game makes it feel like it’s just like charades or something.
**Craig:** We’ll discuss the terrific game.
**John:** Game, yeah.
**Craig:** Word game.
**John:** Not a video game.
**Craig:** It’s a word game. We’ll discuss the terrific-
**John:** Word game.
**Craig:** … social group word game. This is so hard to do. Codenames. It’s Codenames. That’s what we’re talking about, including our favorite tips and house rules. If you’re not playing Codenames, you’ll want to after we’re done with you in our Bonus Segment.
**John:** It’s basically a sales pitch for the game Codenames.
**Craig:** For Codenames.
**John:** It’s an inexpensive game that you will love. It’s a big show. We got to get started on here.
**Craig:** Hodgepodge.
**John:** A bit of news. Last week a group of 400 animation writers and showrunners, myself included, signed a pledge stating that, quote, “We are committed to fighting for WGA coverage on all animation projects we create, write, and produce going forward. We want to be treated equal to live-action writers, not less than.” We’ve talked about this on a show before.
As a refresher, if you’re writing an animated project, you are not guaranteed WGA coverage unless you specifically negotiate for it at the outset. Unlike in live-action, WGA coverage is not automatic, and it can be very hard to get, but it is doable. I was able to get it for an animated project recently, as have several of the other showrunners who’ve signed the pledge. The hope is, with these writers and showrunners saying that they plan to fight for it on their projects, we’ll see more animated projects where the writers work under WGA deals with higher minimums, residuals, paid parental leave. It’s not going to happen overnight. The only way it happens will be writer by writer, project by project. We’ll put a link in the show notes with more details. Now, Craig, a bit of housekeeping-
**Craig:** Great.
**John:** … and some follow-up. You will be glad to know that Seasons 9 and 10 of Scriptnotes are now up in the Premium Feed, because I know that’s a thing you’ve been asking for.
**Craig:** So many seasons.
**John:** So many seasons.
**Craig:** So many. Wait, were those not in the Premium Feed?
**John:** They were in the Premium Feed. Here’s the challenge is that we now have so many Premium episodes that the feed gets to be too big, so we have to lop off them in 50-episode chunks, or else your podcast player will just crash as it tries to load them.
**Craig:** We’re now crashing software we’ve done this so long.
**John:** That’s really where we’re at is just overwhelming things. If you are a Scriptnotes Premium Member and you are listening to back seasons, and you’re getting into the 450, the 500 range, you’ll now find those in Seasons 9 and 10, which are now going to be available through the scriptnotes.net.
**Craig:** Amazing.
**John:** Love it. One other thing, Highland, which is the software that I make, we have a student edition. Now that we’re going back to school, I just want to remind our listeners that if you would like a screenwriting app to be writing your screenplays in, you can get one for free, the full version for free. If you’re a student, you go to Quote-Unquote Apps, and you will see that you can get the license as a college student or a high school student for Highlands, which is the app that I write all my stuff in.
**Craig:** This is your way of getting them addicted to Highland for free, and then later when it’s Highland 3 and they’re out of school, now you’ve got them.
**John:** We’ve got them.
**Craig:** You’ve got them.
**John:** For these next two years, if you want a really good application to be writing a script in that is not going to cost you $99 a year, there you go.
**Craig:** Fantastic.
**John:** Some follow-up. Megana, can you help us out with Andrew?
**Megana Rao:** Andrew wrote in and said, “Listening to last week’s How Would This Be A Movie segment, I was curious if any of you had come across the newsletter at The Ankler called The Optionist.”
**Craig:** That’s a no.
**Megana:** It offers maybe six to eight articles or books each Friday that are available to be optioned and who to contact if you’re interested. It was fun until it went behind a subscriber paywall. This is the part that seems insane to me.”
**Craig:** That’s awesome.
**Megana:** “Subscriptions to The Optionist are $250 a month-”
**Craig:** Oh, god.
**Megana:** “… or $2,500 a year. That’s two months free if you buy the year up front. I would love to hear your thoughts on this price point. It’s bananas to me. How much does this make How Would Be a Movie worth if it was paywalled?”
**John:** That’s really going to be our future business plan is forget scriptnotes.net, it’s all How Would This Be a Movie.
**Craig:** Paywall everything.
**John:** I was not familiar with The Optionist either, but I will say that there are people who do this for a living. I was talking with Todd Hoffman, who runs a service called StoryScout. What they do is they have people who literally, they’re reading all the newspapers. They have deals with all the newspapers to get all the stuff. They’re sifting through it every week, and they’re like, “These are interesting stories.” There are people who pay them subscriptions for that. Hey, if the business model works for them, great. I think what they’re doing though is not just, “Here’s a story,” but they are actually contacting the people who are involved in the story, whoever you need to get for life rights. They can help you put together a bundle of things that might be useful for a studio. That’s not a thing that you or I or any other writer is going to be approaching. It’s something that Sony is paying however much a month. It’s not something that you and I are doing.
**Craig:** Andrew, that’s exactly what’s happened. They launched this to let people know, “Here we are, and this is how it works,” but the paywall at $250 a month is essentially an indication to you that this is not for you.
**John:** Exactly.
**Craig:** This is a business-to-business service. $250 a month for production companies or studios is nothing. This reminds me a little bit of the way Variety used to work. Megana, do you know how expensive Variety used to be when you were a baby?
**Megana:** I do not.
**Craig:** It was like a thousand dollars a year for Variety or something like that.
**John:** For the physical print edition. It was crazy.
**Craig:** It was insane. It was some insane number, because every day there would be Daily Variety. Daily Variety was like eight pages. It was not a large magazine.
**Megana:** This was all physical?
**Craig:** Physical. There was no internet version back then, because there was no internet back then. There was, but not the way it is now. The only Variety and Hollywood Reporter that existed were print. It would be delivered daily to each office. There would be the same copy of Variety on the same coffee table, scattered about a thousand offices in Hollywood, lawyers and executives and producers. It was ridiculously expensive, because you had to get it, or else you didn’t know what was going on. If anything got shooketh by the internet, it was entertainment industry reporting.
**John:** Completely. When I was in the Stark Program at USC, one of the perks we got is all 25 of us in the Stark Program got our own copies of Variety and I think Hollywood Reporter too in our mailboxes every day.
**Craig:** Amazing.
**John:** That was a godsend, because really it was the only way to get a sense of who was where and what was happening, what deals were happening. It was really important. I think we have to credit, honestly, Nikki Finke and Deadline for really breaking the back of-
**Craig:** Credit.
**John:** Acknowledge Nikki Finke.
**Craig:** Thank you.
**John:** Of that form of journalism and the business model of that journalism, because she was doing the same kinds of scoop reporting that was happening in Variety and Hollywood Reporter, but it was just free on the internet, and that changed everything.
**Craig:** It certainly undercut them to the point where everything just came down to what it is now, and it’s less expensive to publish something on the internet than it is to publish it in actual print. It ain’t the way it used to be. That’s for sure. I remember going to newsstands. This is a typical poor kid in Hollywood move. Go to the newsstand, pretend to be browsing, randomly pick up the Daily Variety and, oh, just flip through.
**John:** Oh, flip through it.
**Craig:** The guys that ran those things all knew. They were like, “Nope. Put it back.” They were literally like, “You’re buying it. You’re not reading it. You’re buying it. That’s it. Or put it back.” They were so tired of douchey, pathetic wannabe screenwriters reading their Variety for free, such as myself.
**John:** Craig, do you read any physical magazines at this point?
**Craig:** No.
**John:** I will read, I think I’ve mentioned before, Technology Review and sometimes Wired. If I’m at the airport, I’ll go through the bookstand there. I’m always fascinated by Harvard Business Review, because that thing is $25 a copy. It’s just crazy to me.
**Craig:** Who is that for?
**John:** It’s for people who want to read about Harvard business stuff, I guess. It’s very much in-depth case study things.
**Craig:** Weird.
**John:** I feel like probably if you’re an MBA, it’s the kind of thing you read.
**Craig:** Maybe on a plane.
**John:** On a plane.
**Craig:** I feel like if you are interested in reading the Harvard Business Review on a flight, you have other stuff you should be doing on that flight. You got business to do, hopefully.
**John:** Do your business. You’re a business [crosstalk 00:09:10]
**Craig:** Do your business.
**John:** Do your business.
**Craig:** You do your business. Don’t read about the Harvard business.
**John:** Megana, can you help us out with more questions or follow-up?
**Craig:** Harvard Business is Megana’s real nickname.
**Megana:** The Harvard Business Review is good though. Just a little plug.
**Craig:** A little plug.
**John:** Megana went to Harvard.
**Craig:** She sure did.
**Megana:** IP Curious in Seattle asks, “In Episode 559 during the How Would This Be a Movie segment, when discussing the Indian cricket scam, John and Craig said that you wouldn’t have to buy anything because you’d be making up most of the movie. My question is, when dealing with a true story with actual people, how much freedom do you have to invent a plot? Do you need to change the name of the main character if you’re basing a plot on something in their life but not following exactly what happened?”
**John:** I would say yeah.
**Craig:** Yeah, usually. We’ve sort of answered this before. There is no hard answer for this, IP Curious in Seattle.
**John:** There isn’t.
**Craig:** What happens is there’s this weird needle that moves back and forth, and you let the attorneys at the company determine it for you. Some companies are tougher about this than others. Generally speaking, if you’re dealing with a true story, if you’re taking inspiration from a true story, you are going to have to change events and names. Certainly names. If you are using actual people’s names, you can, but there are way more restrictions on you. You have to be really careful about not defaming them. If you’re going to start inventing stuff and be free, why not just change the name anyway if it doesn’t have any value? With the true story itself, that’s a negotiation with the lawyers to see is this going to be too identifying, are they going to sue us for defamation if you do this or that. Generally speaking, if you’re inspired by a true story, change the names. You’re going to want to change the plot anyway, and you’ll be fine. That’s generally the case.
**John:** I would recommend IP Curious go back and listen to the episode with Liz Hannah and Liz Meriwether talking about the two series that they were doing which were based on actual events. Both of them had situations where these real life people are going to be characters in this and we’re going to use their names, and we have to be careful about this. There are other places where we’re inventing characters to do this function, and those are brand new people. That decision about when you’re doing that and how closely they resemble people in the real world are going to be factors that are going to be discussed with lawyers and other folks down the road. Craig did the same thing in Chernobyl. Some of those people are based on historical figures, but some of them are creations for the series. You’re always going to be making those choices about how you’re doing stuff.
**Craig:** Indeed.
**John:** How about another question, Megana?
**Megana:** Janelle from San Diego wrote in and said, “I have never written in but had to start writing this email before I finished listening to Episode 560, because I could not believe my ears when I-”
**Craig:** Couldn’t believe. Couldn’t believe her ears.
**Megana:** “I could not believe my ears when I heard you tell Leah that there isn’t an audience for short films.”
**Craig:** There isn’t.
**Megana:** “As parents of two young children, my husband and I find it hard to find time to watch a feature film or follow a series, especially if the content is for adult eyes only.”
**Craig:** Oh, my.
**Megana:** “We delight in being able to watch some quality entertainment in the 20 minutes before-”
**Craig:** Megana put some spin on that.
**Megana:** “In the 20 minutes between putting the kids to bed and no longer being able to ignore the fact that neither of them is sleeping. Our friends feel the same, and it is great to be able to get together and discuss something other than the latest Pixar or Cocomelon.”
**Craig:** Great. You’ve found the audience, Janelle. It’s you and your husband and some of your friends. Is that an audience for short films?
**John:** I think audience is really the key word here. You and I were using audience in a different way than Janelle’s using the word audience.
**Craig:** Clearly.
**John:** You and I are using audience for market, like is there a way to make money off of these things.
**Craig:** There isn’t.
**John:** Generally, there isn’t. There are no short film tycoons.
**Craig:** No. Exactly. Janelle, we certainly weren’t suggesting that no one has ever seen a short film, because that seems to be the premise of your complaint here. Of course people have seen them. What we’re saying is there is no substantial audience of the kind to financially support a thriving, profitable short film industry. That’s just a fact. If you’re making a short film specifically because you want it to be seen by lots and lots of people, it won’t be. If you’re making a short film to practice, if you’re making a short film as a calling card, if you’re making a short film because you just have a passion to, all amazing reason. In fact, I would imagine most accomplished short film creators are very aware of the limited nature of the audience for short films, meaning extraordinarily limited, meaning basically you and your husband. Seriously, come on, Janelle, you know what we meant, right? Come on.
**John:** I want to state on the record that we are a pro short film podcast.
**Craig:** We love short films.
**John:** We’re also a pro reality podcast.
**Craig:** Bingo.
**John:** Which is that you are not going to be making money off of that short film that you’re making. Make it for art. Make it for fun. Make it for practice. Make it for all those reasons. If you choose to make a short film, Inneresting from this last week was actually all about short films. It was the post I did way back in 2008. I was blogging about this in 2008, about short films and some just general guidance when you’re thinking about short films, because I see people who try to make short films are just small features, and that doesn’t work. Short films are their own form. They have to have one clear idea, one problem that is solved for the course of that one film. I’ll point you to a post on this. We’ll put a link in the show notes.
**Craig:** Janelle didn’t even list any of the short films she’s seen that she likes.
**John:** Janelle, write back in and tell us what short films you loved recently.
**Craig:** Just so we can spread some positivity, since you and your husband are super into them. Since there isn’t an audience, let’s at least help them find one, a little mini audience, by promoting them.
**John:** We have quick follow-up to that follow-up. Do you want to try this question from Joel?
**Megana:** Yes. Joel from Moorpark, California wrote in and said, “I had a chance to enjoy your short film God and noted how the end plays Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves. I’m curious if and how you secured rights for the song.”
**Craig:** If.
**John:** If. Honestly, if is a more interesting question now than when I made the film. I absolutely did officially get the rights to Walking on Sunshine. It cost maybe $2,000, which was a lot, given the limited budget for the film, but it was worth it for that moment, because Melissa hums it at one point, and then we actually play it over the end credits. For both of those uses, I needed to have the rights to the song. I needed those rights to the song, because if I were going to put this in festivals, which it played a couple places, they would ask if those rights were cleared. That was a thing that I had to be able to show, that those rights are cleared. They’re cleared in perpetuity.
A thing that’s happened in the meantime though, and I think Joel’s aware of this, is that you see a lot of things on YouTube that do not have music rights cleared because they’re using songs that exist out in the world. They get away with that because YouTube has overall licensing agreements with different artists. Even though their algorithms are detecting that that song is in there, they are monetizing it in a way that the artist is making some money. There are ways it can be figured out.
I think you’ll see some stuff on YouTube that the rights would never clear for those songs. Anything you’re doing officially, that you’re going to submit for a competition, you’re going to need to declare those rights. It’s a hassle. It generally is a hassle. You are tracking down who the music publisher is. You are going to them, asking for these specific sync rights and the publishing rights to be able to use it in your thing. I went through a music supervisor who did the music clearances for Go. That was a luxury I had. Even the short films we did back at USC, we had to clear those rights. It was a hassle.
**Craig:** It’s a hassle. No way around it. There’s no if. You do need to do it.
**John:** You do it. You do it. I would say that you don’t need those rights until you are going to do the finished version of it. Obviously, as you’re temping songs into things, or if you’re just doing scratch versions, you don’t get those rights until you actually know, okay, we’re really using this song, and then we’re going to get the contracts and pay the money to do it. For things that are internal presentations, you’re not going to do it. For things that are going to go out in the world, you’re going to want to clear those rights.
**Craig:** Indeed.
**John:** Indeed.
**Craig:** Indeed.
**John:** Let’s do some follow-up on the Monty Hall problem.
**Craig:** Yay.
**John:** This is something we talked about in our Bonus Segment last week. We were talking about when do you intervene with stupid people.
**Craig:** That’s a title of an article in the Harvard Business Journal, I’m sure.
**John:** I will say the Monty Hall problem is not about stupid people. Very many smart, smart people have a hard time intuiting the logic behind it.
**Craig:** Almost everyone.
**John:** I want to do a little follow-up here, because it came upon us spontaneously, and we were talking through it. Craig was right in that ultimately the two thirds/one third solution is how it sorts out. Let’s make sure we’re all talking about the same thing. Craig, describe the Monty Hall problem for people who weren’t listening.
**Craig:** A classic problem. You have three doors. Behind one of the doors is a car that you can win. Behind the other two doors are goats, because in this Monty Hall problem, goats are bad. No one wants one, although goats do have some value. Monty Hall, the host of Let’s Make a Deal, says, “Go ahead and pick a door that you think the car’s behind.” You pick door number one. At that point, Monty opens door number three and reveals that behind door number three is a goat. Now he says to you, “Do you want to stick with door number one, or do you want to switch to door number two?” You have a choice. Most people will say at that point it’s a 50/50 choice, you’re choosing between 1 of 2 doors, but in fact, you should switch, because it is not a 50/50 choice. It’s a one third/two thirds choice. You have a two thirds chance of getting the car behind door number and only a one third chance behind door number one.
The very simple way we talked about this is the only way you’re winning the car if you say, if you keep the door you picked initially, is if you picked it correctly the first time, and there’s a one out of three chance. By eliminating that other possibility of door number three, you now have new information. The new information is that door number two is more likely than door number one, twice as likely, in fact, to have a car behind it.
**John:** One of the things we were wrestling with is that I can kind of get that and it still doesn’t feel right. There’s still some sort of problem. I looked at the Wikipedia article on it, which is actually. I recommend everyone take a look at it. This first became popularized by Marilyn vos Savant, who wrote a weekly column for Parade, was talking about it, and she said that we should definitely switch. Everyone was like, “You can’t possibly switch.” One of the things she pointed out, which I think is a really helpful way of getting over our brain problem of it, is imagine instead of three doors, there are a million doors. You picked one of a million doors. Then they take away all the other doors and say it’s either behind the door you picked or this other door. Then you have to think about, oh, I had a one in a million chance the first time, and now it’s like, oh.
**Craig:** It’s definitely behind the other door.
**John:** It’s going to be behind the other door. That really helps me figure that out.
**Craig:** You eliminate 999,999,998 of the doors, leaving behind the one you initially picked and one other door. The car is behind the other door. You are right that the limited number of doors can really mess with our heads, because it just feels like nothing important has changed, but in fact, something important has changed. This is a weird one. It’s like you said. It is a problem that has, what’s called fooled or misled a lot of people, including people who study these things. It was so hard for people to wrap their mind around it.
**John:** Let’s also talk about the decision. If you’re the contestant who is deciding, “Oh, do I stick with the first door or do I switch?” there are some natural biases that kick in. The article also talks through what those are. We have what’s called the endowment effect. People tend to overvalue the probability that they were right the first time. It’s a loss aversion. They don’t want to lose what they already had. There’s a status quo bias as well. You’re more comfortable to stick with what you’ve got rather than take a risk.
**Craig:** When you’re playing games of chance, the entire premise is that you are going to get lucky. We tend to associate our luck with our choices in gambling, as opposed to what’s happening. If I’m playing roulette, and I put everything on 28, and 28 comes up, my luck is about the fact that I chose 28. That’s where I got lucky. It has nothing to do with the bouncing ball. It was just doing what it’s doing. We do overvalue the choices we make. That’s why it feels bad. It’s almost disloyal. Also, we have been told all of our lives to stick with your gut, and it will feel worse. If we lose with the choice we made initially, it won’t feel as bad as if we lose by giving it away somehow and switching.
**John:** I want to frame this in terms of characters making choices. This is all about choices. Characters I think naturally have an instinct at the start of a story to want to keep things the way they have always been. They’re pushing to get away from it, but generally they’re hearing that call to adventure. They may ignore that call to adventure, because they know what they have, and they don’t want to risk losing what they have. That’s a very natural thing. We encounter characters at the beginning of stories that way. They’re also facing a choice, generally later on in the story, where in order to achieve that final goal, they may risk everything they’ve gotten through all up to that point. Now they’re at this one place. They don’t want to take that last risk and basically just change doors in order to get that final prize. Those are real things that characters are facing in almost every story you can imagine.
**Craig:** Absolutely. When they lose something initially, what they’re trying to do is get back to it. They love their door. They love door one. Someone says, “You can’t have door number one anymore,” and they’re like, “Okay, I’ll open some other doors, but the point is to get back to my door number one. I love it.” Then eventually, where things get really bad is when they suddenly realize, “There’s nothing behind any of these doors. Doors are not correct. I should be doing something else entirely.” You realize that you’ve been living a false choice. That’s when characters are at their lowest, I think.
**John:** The only way to win the game is not to play the game.
**Craig:** Is not to play.
**John:** Craig, this last week I was working on a new script that I’m writing. I was encountering a thing which I’d seen before, but I’d never felt it the same way. I’m curious your perspective on this. The thing I’m writing has multiple storylines. The storylines don’t directly interact until the very end of the story. I can cut freely between the two of them, which is really, of course, helpful. Movies do this. TV shows do this all the time.
A thing I was finding though is that as a reader and as an audience, we want the same amount of time to be happening in both of them. We have a strange issue about days and nights happening. Basically, if it went to night in one of the storylines, it would be weird that it didn’t feel like it was night in the other one. Cutting back and forth between the two of them, there’s just a weird time expectation when we have multiple storylines happening, even if it’s not strict story logic. You always encounter things where it’s like, this is impossible because they are on different sides of the earth, and it shouldn’t be day in both places. I’m curious, in your features, but also in your TV show, have you encountered this issue in having to move some scenes around just because it feels like… This is also a thing you may be doing in editorial as well. It feels like the time is not working between the two different storylines.
**Craig:** This is an essential part of structure and the hardware of designing these shows or movies, because people need to understand where they are, and time is part of where they are. Cinematographers hate when I say this. I’ve said it before. I think there are three times that we can show. We can show dark, we can show light, and we can show in between. That’s basically it. If we need to know more specific levels of time, we need to indicate those with clocks or with titles, which is fine. That’s a technique.
When moving back and forth between timelines, if we need to, we have to plan it out. This is something I do with first ADs, where you write out, and with a script supervisor, what day is this. Our script coordinator actually went through and would always be like, “Okay, this is now production day four,” not meaning how many shooting days, but in the progression of what we do and to track where we are in days. It’s actually really important to do. When you’re pushing together two different stories, and you want one to be in the day, and you want the next one to be at night, or vice versa, particularly when you’re going from night to day, you need probably something to indicate the passage of time before you get to the B-side of that. An exterior shot. It’s now night.
**John:** I literally had to have an establishing shot, which wasn’t going to feel necessary, but I realized, oh, that’s actually genuinely there. It made me also realize that a lot of times in Game of Thrones when we’re going back to one of those storylines, there’s a big establishing shot, because weirdly, you just needed some time to sit and let it be a different time and different place before you got into these things.
**Craig:** We have a natural… Our minds. Thank God, because this is why editing works. Our minds will just smush things together. If I show you somebody in a basement talking, and then I show you a scene of somebody walking around in a room, we will often go, “Oh, that room must be above that basement.” We just make those connections instantly. We often need some kind of indication that something has changed. Sometimes it can be sound. We can use sound, so it’s very clear we’re in a different kind of spot, or score or something. When it comes to time, nothing is as useful as showing what the outside looks like, because that is in our cavewoman, caveman brains. Where is sun? That is time.
**John:** It’s also occurring to me that different projects, different series will establish their own grammar for what they’re going to do in terms of how time works in their shows. Station Eleven has giant title cards that say “7 days earlier.” You’re flipping around so much in times, you stop obsessing about it in a way. It’s okay that it’s a little bit impressionistic. I would say Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women does the same kind of thing where you’re free-floating between these different times, and they’re different ages, and it just all works, because thematically stuff is moving forward, as opposed to Lost, which sets a very clear, like, okay, from each episode, one character will have a flashback to earlier things. Those flashbacks will progress forward in time, but they’re not tethered to any one thing happening on the island and the real world clock ticking on the island. It’s a very different way of going about things than other shows, which might be running two parallel timelines.
**Craig:** I think television narrative is becoming more and more complicated. I think Lost was viewed as a bit of a brain teaser for people at the time, and now it’s just what people do, screwing around with time and fooling people with time and location and places. Do you remember how you felt when you got to that point in the third act of Silence of the Lambs, where you realized, “Wait wait wait, that’s not his house. They went to that house, and she’s going to that house.”
**John:** Yeah.
**Craig:** That amazing misdirection-
**John:** That reveal.
**Craig:** … preyed on our natural ability to put locations together. Study that one, folks, and realize what you’re up against, because what you don’t want to do is not be in control of that phenomenon. If you’re going to mess with it, mess with it intentionally, but just know that it’s real.
**John:** Megana, have you seen all of Yellowjackets?
**Megana:** I have, yes.
**John:** How does time work in Yellowjackets? I’ve only seen the first two episodes. Over the course of the series, we’re intercutting between present day and the past. Can a lot of time happen in the past over an episode, or is it more limited?
**Megana:** It does feel more limited. The past is a survival story about when their plane crashed. The teaser starts with a flashback that is after the flashback that we see through the series. It’s a couple of years after the plane crash or something.
**John:** That’s a reveal that they get to you over the course of the series, that you’re leading up to that moment?
**Megana:** Yeah, it seems like both the present timeline and the flashback are moving from a set point, except for that teaser, I guess.
**John:** That’s great. How about Where the Crawdads Sing. I see you have this on the list, but I have not read it or seen it.
**Megana:** They structured it where in the present timeline she’s awaiting her court date, but then it goes in flashback through her entire life. Most of the present timeline is very dark. She’s in this cell. Then you get all of the daylight scenes through the flashbacks. I was curious, cutting between these things, is it one of those things where it’s uncomfortable to see it being day in both of the timelines, or do you have to consciously switch between them?
**Craig:** I think that’s okay. You mean when you go from 2022 to 1982, can you go day to day?
**Megana:** Right.
**Craig:** Yeah, you could absolutely do that. You just need to design the transition in such a way that you get an instant signifier that something very… The corny version is someone’s walking around, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m something something,” and then you cut to Madonna playing on the radio, and someone walks around with feathered hair, and you’re in the ’80s. You need some kind of indication, or else it’ll take a moment or two. People will wonder, especially with clothes. If the clothes aren’t super obviously cheesy time period, you might not realize that it’s a different time period.
**John:** Absolutely. Some shows will rely on that misdirection. Obviously, the pilot to This is Us used that misdirection. You assume that this is all taking place in one timeline. You realize that you’re actually in two different timelines and establishing the grammar of the show, which is always going to be moving back from those timelines.
In Big Fish, we have the present day storyline, and then we have the fantasy storyline. Those are examples of every time I’m moving into a fantasy story, and to think about what is the transition into that and what is the transition out of that. Almost everything I wrote in the script really was carried out as the transitions to get us into and out of those places, because it was important to make it feel deliberate when we’re moving into one of those stories, so we could keep moving stuff forward. Again, all the fantasy stories did move forward in time, which was important. I wasn’t just flashing back to any random moment.
**Craig:** The other transitional element you have is a character. If you’re going into a character’s alternate self back in time, forward in time, in a fantasy world, their appearance, the way they match in, that stuff can sometimes bring you back in time. You don’t need to go from day to night or night to day. That’s not an essential part of time shifting.
**John:** Cool. Megana, you have a question about finishing up projects.
**Megana:** John from Madison, Wisconsin wrote, “I just came off my first weekend on set shooting a short I wrote.”
**John:** Short films.
**Megana:** “It was one of the best experiences of my life hearing and seeing amazing actors bring alive images and lines that lived in my head for so long. It was really overwhelming. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. Now it’s Monday morning, and I’m blue as hell. Is this normal? I feel a loss, like someone has died or left me. What is this, and how do I move past it? I can imagine the advice to write something new, but that feels like telling the newly widowed to just go find someone else. Have you guys ever felt this? How do you deal with it?”
**Craig:** John, have you ever felt this?
**John:** I’ve felt generally relief at the end of a project, but I do get what John is expressing overall is that your identity and your excitement, you were building up to do this thing, and you got to do it with a group of people, and hopefully it turned out great, and then it’s done. It’s just like college is done or a semester is done. There was great stuff. It was an adventure. Now that adventure is over. You can feel kind of at sea.
**Craig:** I do feel this. I feel this intensely, almost every time. I feel this, honestly, when I finish writing a script. I really feel it when I’m done with shooting something. You did a weekend, and you’re missing it. I did a year, John from Madison. I talk to Bella and Pedro all the time, and just because we’re bummed. We’re sad. We miss each other. We miss the life.
Something that Bella was saying that is very true is when you’re shooting, it gives your life this sense of incredible structure and purpose that you just normally don’t have. You are working 12 hours every day, and your day is very clearly defined, and what you need to do is defined. It is hustle and bustle. It’s highs and lows, a lot of emotion, panic, anxiety, but you’re alive. Man, you’re alive. You’re exhausted, but you’re alive, and you’re making something. Then suddenly there’s just silence, and no one’s there, and there is no call sheet telling you what to do or where to go. You have to figure out what am I having for lunch. This is absolutely normal, John, I think. It’s normal for you and me. How about that?
**John:** I think it’s a normal experience. What you’re describing also reminds me of people talk about when they leave the military, they really miss that sense of purpose, they miss that sense of structure. You had that while you were making the short film. People have this when they’re on Survivor, when they’re doing something intense that is taking 100% of their time. When you remove that, you do kind of feel at sea. Let’s think through what are some good strategies for getting through this. First, it’s just you’re acknowledging it. I think it’s important just to acknowledge how you’re feeling and recognize that it’s not strange to feel this way, it’s natural to feel this way. You’re going to find other… You need to look for things that can revive that sense of purpose, even if it’s not so intense as making a short film over a weekend. Try to make sure that your life feels purposeful on a daily basis.
**Craig:** There are days where it isn’t. I think John’s right that acknowledging it is really important, and knowing it’s normal is important. The thing that helps the most is the thing that helps all of the things the most, and that’s time. It’s just time. You have to experience it. You’re saying you’re very into mourning, and you are mourning. There is a grief involved in these things ending. Then it ends. It fades, and you’re okay again.
Don’t lose that desire to get back in there. It is an addictive life. It is an exciting life. The more you do it, and the better you get, the more professional and impressive the people around you get. That’s when it starts to be awesome. Then you end up working with world-class actors and world-class crews, doing incredible things. The stakes get higher and higher, and the stress gets higher and higher. The scrutiny is more and more. Yet what else would we rather do? I think, John, this is good news for you in Madison, Wisconsin. You love this. See if you can’t do the things you need to do to turn this into a living. If you can’t, then do the things you need to do to turn this into an incredible pastime, hobby.
**John:** Fully agree.
**Megana:** Craig, when you describe feeling this after you finish a script, do you build in a couple of days to, I don’t know, be sad about it, or do you just keep writing?
**Craig:** I definitely build in days. I just know that there’s going to be probably a week where I’m just bummed out, because when I’m writing a script, it’s like I’m on a set in my head with all these characters in my head, and we’re all doing these things together and finding these things and seeing these things. Because every script naturally has a point where it lands and ends, it’s like that is now dead.
**John:** Now Craig, your experience on this TV show where you’re writing script after script after script after script, I suspect it was slightly different, because while you might finish a script, there’s always that other script that’s about to start shooting, and one down the road. Did you feel the same sense of closure at the end of each of these scripts as you were writing for these 10 episodes?
**Craig:** I did. I did, yeah, because like I said, each one has to end. The scripts end. When they end, it’s like that chapter is done. I’ve written that chapter. It’s over. I will never be able to write that for the first time again. There’s terrible then impending doom and panic that more had to be written. There’s a lot of weird stuff that happens when you make the insane decision to write an entire series by yourself, because then you’re imposing this feeling upon yourself over and over and over. It’s probably not healthy at all. In fact, it’s not healthy at all. A lot of what we do is not healthy.
**John:** When I wrote my three Arlo Finch books, and I committed to doing three books over the course of three years, it was that level of just like, “Oh my god, I’m just a person who writes Arlo Finch books. That’s all I do every day is write Arlo Finch books.” I loved it. I loved that structure and that discipline. I did feel a loss when a book was delivered, but also I did feel a sense of relief, just like my kid was off in college now and I actually had some free time to do some other things that were appealing to me. That’s the thing I would also remind John is it’s great that you were able to shoot this short film, fantastic, you’ll be editing, you’ll be doing all that stuff, but I bet you also have 15 other ideas that you’re chomping to get started on. When the time comes, you’ll get to write out one of those, and that’ll be exciting for you too.
**Craig:** Yeah, so good news, John, in a weird way. Good news.
**John:** Good news. Let’s do our One Cool Things. Craig, what’s your One Cool Thing?
**Craig:** I may have talked about Kevin Wald and his cryptics before, but this One Cool Thing involves his latest that came out, and a little bit of a challenge to our listeners. Kevin Wald, he’s a gentleman who is a member of the National Puzzlers League, NPL. The National Puzzlers League, that is the Major Leagues of puzzle solving. They are very smart, very advanced solvers and creators. They create some of the more fiendish puzzles in existence. Kevin Wald, I’m just going to call him the evil emperor of cryptics. We’ve talked about cryptic crosswords before, which are much harder than regular crosswords. Then there’s really hard cryptics, insanely hard cryptics, and after all of that, there’s Kevin Wald cryptics, which are insane. He typically will do a group of three cryptics that are connected to the city where the National Puzzlers League is having their convention.
In 2022 the convention took place in Nashville, Tennessee. There are three cryptics. They function the way a lot of his cryptic groups do. You solve the first two, and then the answers from those feed into some of the answers for three. We’re going to put a link in here. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, you’ll see the 2022 puzzles. If you click on the first one, which is entitled “Pennsylvania Railroad, New York,” and you look at just the instructions, just the instructions-
**John:** Wow.
**Craig:** … for what’s happening will scare away, I’m going to guess, 98% of you, as well they should. Then the remaining 2% of you are going to try and do this. I think maybe 10% of that 2% will complete it. It’s really hard, and it’s wonderful.
**John:** That’s great.
**Craig:** I do these over the course of weeks. Weeks. I finally finished all three of them. The insanity and the beauty of his construction and the way it all moves together, you just marvel at it. You also marvel at yourself for finishing it. Here’s the contest. It’s a One Cool Thing contest for our listeners. If you can solve these three puzzles, including all of the prompts in all of the puzzles, and you can send me your grids and your answers, and they’re correct, then I’ll give you something. What do you want? You tell me what you want. I’ll try and make it happen. We can negotiate a prize.
The only rule I have is that you cannot be or have been a member of the National Puzzlers League. You’ve got to be what I would call a layperson. You don’t have to be necessarily new to these, but really this is intended for people who aren’t routinely solving Kevin Wald puzzles. This is for newbies. Let’s see, you cryptic geniuses out there, if you can handle the mad emperor of cryptics, Kevin Wald.
**John:** You’re trying to create new mad puzzlers is really what you’re trying to do.
**Craig:** Yes. This is like The Last Starfighter. I’m recruiting for some sort of space battle that requires incredible cryptic ability.
**John:** I love it. Let’s send those answers to ask@johnaugust.com. It’d be fantastic if 20 people solved it.
**Craig:** 20 people are not going to solve it. Not a chance.
**John:** We’ll see how many people solve it.
**Craig:** If one person does, I will be thrilled. We can think of a prize. We’ll have a fun prize for you. We’ll certainly say your name on the air.
**John:** Love it. I have two One Cool Things. One of them is very short. Nathan Fielder did this show called Nathan For You, which I loved. It took me a while to get into it, but it’s just great. All those episodes are available online. You can find them. His new show called The Rehearsal I think is actually a masterpiece. It’s on HBO Max. You can find it. Craig, do you know the premise of the show at all?
**Craig:** I do. I’m going to watch it, but it put my stomach in knots just hearing about it.
**John:** Everything with Nathan Fielder has a wince factor. It’s like, “Oh my god, this is so uncomfortable, and yet also great and super, super funny.” The premise of the show is that Nathan Fielder will find a person who is facing a dilemma, generally a conversation they need to have with somebody or a situation they need to figure out. He will physically build sets that resemble the place where you’re going to have this conversation and recruit actors to be the other people in this. He will go to absurd lengths to create these rehearsal situations, practice this thing, exactly what you’re going to say or what you’re going to do. I don’t want to spoil what happens over the course of it, but it just gets to be so absurd and so funny. He becomes a major character in it. I strongly recommend you watch The Rehearsal, which is great.
Last is just a bit of a hooray for the WGA Pension and Health Plan added coverage for trans health issues that were long needed. I was sort of unaware of them. They are now being covered. I’m going to point you to an article by Eleanor Jean and Katrina Mathewson talking about what the process was to get really good, proper trans health care into what we always think about as being really good health insurance but was not even up to the level of MediCal before this.
**Craig:** Wow.
**John:** That’s great to see.
**Craig:** What are some specifics of what we are now offering folks in our plan?
**John:** It’s basically gender-affirming care. There’s an organization called WPATH, World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which sets the standards for these. What the article makes clear is that WGA was currently offering what other guilds were offering, was not up to the level of what Amazon was offering, what a bigger company was offering, but it was possible. What they needed to do was really show these are the things, these are the dollar these things cost, just to do the things that are necessary for a person who needs health care, because what Eleanor Jean was saying is that in a weird way, it would make more sense for her to stop being a writer and just get on MediCal to get some of this stuff, because the disparities were so great there. It’s an encouraging story that it took a lot of people really figuring out how to do this and make it work for it to happen there, but it’s now in our health plan.
**Craig:** That sounds incredibly positive. I’m a little bit surprised, honestly, because like you say, we think of our insurance as being better than almost everybody else’s. I guess there you go. It’s like, yeah, if you aren’t transgender, it is. Then you find out from transgender people that for them it’s not. I’m glad that we are getting everybody in alignment. This is the best of what we can provide writers, and so it should be the best of what we can provide writers. Excellent move.
**John:** I’ll put a link in the show notes to their article talking through the whole process and what actually was won.
**Craig:** Good.
**John:** Hooray. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli.
**Craig:** That’s right.
**John:** Our outro this week is by Adam Pineless.
**Craig:** No pines.
**John:** Someone pointed out that you never actually say hooray after our outros.
**Craig:** That’s right. I’m glad. It took 562 episodes for somebody to notice. I’ll tell you why. Here’s why. It’s not that I’m not cheering for the people who do our outros. They’re wonderful. I do think we have to carve out some special space for Matthew and Megana or whoever might succeed Megana, may that day never come to a truth.
**Megana:** Key emphasis on might.
**Craig:** Exactly. 90-year-old Megana dealing with, whatever, our children doing this show. They need special acknowledgement. Personally, I don’t know these folks. What if somebody who wrote the outro is actually a total bastard?
**John:** Also, the reality is Craig has not heard the outro before, as I’m saying this.
**Craig:** That’s right.
**John:** He has no idea how good it is.
**Craig:** It could be terrible. It’s never terrible.
**John:** It’s never terrible. They’re all great.
**Craig:** I’m sure none of you are bastards. Certainly, Adam Pineless at this point is wondering, “Why on my outro did this have to happen?” Adam, you get a woohoo.
**John:** Woohoo. If you have an outro, like Adam, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions or answers to Craig’s impossible puzzle challenge.
**Craig:** It’s possible.
**John:** Possible.
**Craig:** It’s possible, but unlikely.
**John:** For shorter questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin, I’m @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts, and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau, along with hoodies. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all of the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on Codenames.
**Craig:** Codenames.
**John:** That’s also where you’ll find out first about our live shows that are coming up. Definitely sign up at scriptnotes.net. Craig and Megana, thank you for a fun show.
**Craig:** Thank you, John.
**Megana:** Thank you.
[Bonus Segment]
**John:** Craig, we have to set the scene for our Codenames experience, because I never played with you, but I assumed you knew what Codenames was, because it feels like a very good board game. We were supposed to be playing D and D in person. We were all there with our laptops, because of course, our maps are on laptops now. Our character sheets are on laptops.
**Craig:** We were at our friend Chris Morgan’s house. His internet did something I’ve never encountered before.
**John:** It was wild.
**Craig:** It was weird. He has WiFi in his house. For whatever reason, his WiFi would accept no more than two or three connections. After that, no, you couldn’t get on. There were three people, like my phone, his laptop, and his laptop are working. Nobody else’s can get on, or would get on and then immediately get booted off. Then somebody would log off of theirs, and then somebody else could log on, but then other people couldn’t log on. If you’re an IT professional, if you can explain that, I’d love to hear the answer to that one.
**John:** You had 6 men in their 40s and 50s all trying to solve a WiFi problem. That’s a comedy right there.
**Craig:** It was six “actually” guys all failing completely. Legitimately, I’ve never encountered a situation where the internet was there, the WiFi was providing it beautifully, but to no more than three local IPs. Can someone explain that, somebody who knows about fricking network crap? Can you tell me why that would happen? It was really weird. We were stuck. In lieu of playing D and D, we broke out Codenames, which Chris had at his house but had actually never played. Of course, John, you and I play Codenames. I play it all the time.
**John:** Megana plays it as well. Let’s describe Codenames for people who have not played the game before.
**Craig:** Which is easy to do, actually.
**John:** It really is.
**Craig:** One of the few games where describing it is simple.
**John:** It is absolutely. This is the classic Codenames. You open the box. There are cards that have just single words on them. They’re small, little cards. You lay them out on a grid on the table, 5 by 5, so 25 cards are out on the table. There are two clue-givers. In the first round, it was me and Craig were giving clues. We are looking at a special little card that shows the grid. Some of the squares are blue. Some of the squares are red. Let’s say Craig is red, I’m blue. Craig is responsible to get his team to guess the words that match up with those red squares. He will be giving a single word clue. His team will try to figure out which words that clue could refer to. I’m going to try to do the same for the blue team to my blue words for my team. It’s surprisingly fun and challenging to do, because you’re trying to get as many words as possible in each round without getting the other team’s words or hitting this saboteur who could kill the whole thing.
**Craig:** There’s an acronym that Matt Gaffney, who does the weekly Matt Gaffney meta-crossword, uses, and that’s SAD, S-A-D, simple and difficult. Simple and difficult is basically the holy grail of game mechanics, and this one is practically the epitome of it, because it is the simplest thing to explain. There’s 25 words out there. I’m going to give you a single word and then a number. That number is an indication of how many of those words I’m cluing to. My job is if I’m like, “Okay, I need to come up with a word that connects to anvil and heart and music. Maybe I’ll say beat, B-E-A-T, beat for three.” Then the team has to look at all 25 words and hopefully land on heart, music, and anvil, because we’re using beat in different ways for each one of those words. It’s really fun. It’s really tricky. John, earlier you said we’re rooting for each other. I always feel like when I’m the clue-giver, I’m kind of rooting for my fellow clue-giver, because we’re both in a pickle. Everybody else is this innocent who can just guess.
**John:** Absolutely.
**Craig:** You’re the ones who know everything and have all the responsibility and accountability. It’s a terrific game. It, as they usually say about Othello, takes a moment to learn and a lifetime to master.
**John:** A lifetime to master.
**Craig:** It’s a terrific game. After we finished, I did talk a little bit about what I consider to be Codenames’s smarter, older sibling, Decrypto.
**John:** Decrypto, which is another good game.
**Craig:** Awesome.
**John:** I want to talk about Decrypto, but I want to first focus on two house rules or things that I’ve noticed that were different about how you played versus how I played. I think one of the great things about playing games with new people is you see, oh, this is how they do things. A house rule we always have is that if you are the team who’s guessing word, you could talk talk talk talk talk, but ultimately, you put your finger on the card to say, “I’m choosing this card,” because otherwise, I’ve been in situations where it’s ambiguous, like are they really saying it or are they not saying it? Put your finger on the card. That is the indicator. If you touch the card, you’ve chosen it.
**Craig:** I agree.
**John:** That’s our rule.
**Craig:** That’s how we play as well.
**John:** A thing that you were doing, which I’d never done ourselves but is so smart, is that you made a list. You had a notebook, and you made a list of all of your words so you could see them outside of the context of the grid. That is genuinely a good, smart thing to be doing that I have not seen other players do, because you can see connections more easily when you’re not looking upside-down at the words, trying to figure out what the common threads are there.
**Craig:** Part of the little method I use is I write down the words that I know I have to clue, and then I started just looking at that list and going, “Okay, here’s some obvious things I could do. Let me circle these and draw a line. I can clue these three. I can clue these two. What do I have left over? Is there a way for me to put one of those into this other group?” The most important thing you have to consider when you do that method is you can’t get lost on your list, because you need to then look immediately. You’re like, “Okay, this word will clue these three. Now let me look back at the table, because am I also mistakenly cluing one of my opponent’s words, or is there a word that’s neither of our words, that would be the first thing they would guess?” Also, there is that one killer word that immediately loses you the game if your team guesses it. Don’t get lost in your list, but the list is a very good way to start.
**John:** Now, I think the original Codenames is a fantastic game, but Megana Rao actually gifted me what I think is actually a better version of Codenames, which is Codenames: Pictures, which I’m not sure if you ever played.
**Craig:** I’ve seen it. I haven’t played it.
**John:** It is phenomenal. Like Codenames, you have a grid of cards. I think you’re actually only putting out 20 cards at a time. They have these weirdly ambiguous images. A couple things are combined on it. It could be you see a clown, but there’s also a horse and something else. They’re well-done images. You’re still responsible for giving one-word clues. What I like is it takes the words on the table out of the picture, so you’re really just focusing on what could get people to think about these things. Are you describing the shape of something? “Pointy” might be a word I would get. It’s like, “Oh, that looks like both that sun illustration, but also that pencil.” It forces you to think differently about how you’re going to tie these clues together.
**Craig:** I should play it. I want to play it. I love the Codenames extended universe.
**John:** It is. There’s Dirty Codewords, which is fine. Basically, you’re going to say some more provocative things because of the words that are-
**Craig:** Poop.
**John:** Poop. There’s a Marvel Codenames. It’s a whole extended universe.
**Craig:** Marvel Codenames. Oh my god. “Hero.”
**John:** “Hero.”
**Craig:** “Hero” for everything.
**John:** Megana, you got me the Codenames: Pictures. Any other Codenames experience you’ve had?
**Megana:** I’ve only played the regular one we have at the office and Codenames: Pictures. I’m curious if this is how you play too, Craig, because now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t know if it’s kosher, but when John is guessing, he will go through methodically clue by clue and explain his reasoning for not picking it, which makes it easier as a clue-giver to know where there might’ve been a miss. Is that standard?
**Craig:** Legal? It is legal. It’s legal.
**Megana:** Sorry, not to put you on blast, John.
**Craig:** No, I’m glad that you’re exposing John for what he is, which is a monster. That’s totally legal. I would argue that if you have played enough as a clue-giver, that kind of insight into the guesser’s mind will probably screw you up more often than it helps you, because they will not be consistent. That’s the one thing I know. They will not at all be consistent. This is the tricky part. You clue a word, and you’re cluing it for three. They get two of them right and one of them wrong. Now they’re going to have a chance to go back and try and guess again on that one, meaning guess back on your old clue. What if you can fold that remaining word into a new clue? They won’t know. They may keep cluing back to that old clue. All of their talking does not predict a damn thing. My rule is that the guessers can talk as much as they want. They may also be giving the other team information.
**John:** Of course.
**Craig:** That’s the risk that they take. The only thing is that the clue-givers really have to try very hard to not say anything other than the word and the number, which is why if you’re playing online with friends, and you go to the official Codenames website, which is free, you can play for free online, what’s nice about it is you type your clue in, you hit a number, and so all your teammates get is just that feedback. There is information in saying, “Okay, this is a stretch, but shorts for nine.”
**John:** Shouldn’t be able to do that. Between the padding, the framing of stuff, and just body language, which you should try to not reveal, but of course it’s hard not to indicate like, “Oh my god, don’t pick that one, because it’s the assassin,” as clue-givers you cannot be doing that. Still, people are going to try to read for that, because it’s human nature.
**Craig:** Exactly. One of the fun parts about playing in person is if you are an experienced Codenames player and you’re the clue-giver, you should actually come to enjoy saying nothing and being as sphinxlike as possible, not having any reaction, not sighing, not looking, not smiling, nothing. In a weird way, I’m almost rooting against my team. That’s how I make sure that I don’t give them body language. One of the newer players made a classic new player mistake. It was totally normal. When they were a clue-giver, his team was like, “Hm, it’s probably this.” Then the other team was like, “You know, it could be that,” just being jerks about it. The clue-giver was like, “You guys stay out of it.” That’s information. He’s basically saying don’t distract them from what they were saying, because what they were saying is correct. The thing is, when you’re a clue-giver, you have to literally give zero information beyond the word and the amount of words you want them to guess, which is fine.
**John:** The cleanest version of this, the clue-giver would write down something, hand it across, and leave the room, but that wouldn’t be fun for a party game. That’s why you don’t do that.
**Craig:** When you are playing with people remotely over Zoom, and you’re looking at the screen, it actually is kind of fun. You can turn your camera off if you can’t handle it. I was playing once where somebody, they were great, but they honestly were like, “I can’t handle it. I’m turning my camera off,” because what happens is, as the clue-giver, you give a clue, you think it’s really good, and maybe it is. Maybe one person on the team is like, “Oh, it’s got to be these three things.” You’re like, “Yes, I’m good, you’re good.” They’re like, “Great, let’s do it.” Then one person’s like, “Just one thing,” and they bring up some dumb thing about another word that’s so stupid. People want to go along, get along with other people, like, “I don’t want to fight,” so they just end up blowing it. You’re like, “You mother… “ There are times where just inside you’re like a raging volcano. You must be quiet. You must stay zen on the outside.
**Megana:** A moment of pride for me is John’s husband, Mike, is incredibly stoic always, but especially when he is the clue-giver in Codenames. Because Mike and John aren’t allowed to play on the same team, I’m normally paired up with Mike. One time I guess my postulations were so off the wall that I brought Mike to tears. He was laughing so hard about how ridiculous my jumps were.
**Craig:** Are you an over-thinker?
**Megana:** Definitely. The clue was “sheath.” I was talking aloud.
**Craig:** “Sheath.”
**Megana:** I was like, “Could a bomb have a sheath, like a sheath that contains the dynamite or something?” I’m definitely that nightmare person you described, Craig.
**Craig:** The little strategy that I always recommend to new players to consider is, and ideally your clue-giver is working this way too, when you think, “Okay, maybe they’re cluing these two words,” ask yourself, “Okay, it’s either they’re cluing these two words, this one and this one, or it’s this first one and this other one.” Ask the question, what else would they have clued? Is there a better clue they could’ve given for those two as opposed to those two? Because if there is an obvious better clue, then they’re probably not cluing that one, because they didn’t go for the obvious clue. They’re probably cluing this one. It’s a good thing to think through. If I wanted you to pick those two, like if I wanted you to pick “Ireland” and “gold,” I would’ve said, “Leprechaun.” I would not have said what I ended up saying, which was, whatever, “Peat moss.” That was “Ireland” and “vegetable.” “Peat moss” is two words. You can’t use that, but regardless.
**Megana:** Our team typically goes high volume. We’re giving clues for four words at a time.
**Craig:** Four is hard to do.
**John:** It is.
**Megana:** High risk, high reward.
**Craig:** Sure. Everybody has their own strategies. Look, hell, if I can clue eight words, I will. One of the early games I played of Codenames, David Kwong was the clue-giver. I was the only guesser. It was just four people playing. The other team was cluing for three, cluing for two. He was like, “Clue for one. Clue for one. Clue for one.” I was like, “What the F are you doing, dude? You’re killing us.” He gave me no information.
We’re screwed. They’re next. It’s our turn. They are next. They only have one word left, and so we’re going to lose. I think we had six words or something. Then he clued something for six. I was like, “Oh, okay.” He needed to get certain words off the board to make his massive six-word clue work. He was waiting them out, because they had words that would’ve gotten in the way of his clue. He just waited for them and then dropped the bomb, and we won. I was like, “Okay, I apologize for doubting you, sensei.”
**John:** Decrypto, you’ve mentioned before, is sort of like the opposite of Codnames. Basically, there are words that everyone can see that you’re trying to say but not say, so that you can get these numbers to match up. I think it’s a really, really smart game. Megana, can you tell us why we don’t play it in the office? Is it because Nima doesn’t like it?
**Megana:** Yeah, Nima hates Decrypto, but I am always making the pitch for it.
**Craig:** Nima is wrong.
**John:** He’s wrong.
**Craig:** He’s wrong, and he needs to stop that. It’s simple, because Decrypto is Codenames all grown up. The simple way to describe Decrypto is let’s say we’re on the same team. You and John and I, the three of us, we’re on a team. We have four words. All three of us know what those four words are. Each word is numbered. We have word number 1, word number 2, word number 3, and word number 4, and we know them. Then each round, one of us is going to be a clue-giver. That rotates through on each round. The clue-giver picks a card. The card will just have three digits on it. They will be some combination of 1, 2, 3, or four . It might 324. It might be 142. That tells me, okay, it’s 142, so I need to give 3 words, so that my team can look at word 1, 2, 3, and 4, and go, “Okay, that clue is word 1, that clue is word 3, that clue is word 4.” Then they say the number back. That’s it, easy.
Why is it a game? Here’s why. Because when I give them those three words, and then they respond with what the correct answer is with the numbers, the other team hears it. The other team goes, “Okay, we don’t know what their words are, but we know that that dude clued ‘grass,’ ‘tall,’ and ‘cow,’ and then their response was ‘324,’ and that was correct, so we know now the ‘cow’ clue is word 3.”
As each round goes, you collect more and more words that keep cluing back to whatever word number 1 is. Now you have four words that somehow that other team knew was word 1. You’re asking yourselves, what do these four words clue possibly commonly? Then when you get it, it’s mind-blowing and awesome, because obviously they’re trying to mislead you. You’re doing the same thing, and they’re trying to guess your words. It’s fantastic. It’s so great. Nima has rocked me, and I’m shooketh.
**John:** I think Nima would be great at that. I agree it’s a really terrific game. I think what’s different about it is that aspect of it. It’s not even social deception. It’s really just deception. It’s basically how do I not let you think what the answer is? You’re trying to make sure that your teammates understand what you’re trying to say, without the other team being able to infer it. That’s great.
**Craig:** Exactly, because if your team gets it wrong twice, you lose. If the other team guesses your code twice, they win. There’s almost no margin for error. It’s more chess-like in that regard. I’m really shocked. Nima needs to reevaluate I think everything at this point. Everything.
**John:** We’ll have you over to the office for our Friday game block, and you’ll talk us through.
**Craig:** I’m going to make him play Decrypto. Melissa is very good at Decrypto.
**John:** I’m sure she’s great at that.
**Craig:** She’s terrifyingly good at Decrypto. We also have some little house rule versions where we’ll say, okay, this round, everybody’s three clues have to start with the same letter, or in this round, the three clues have to be thematic in some way, like “ball,” “bounce,” and “round,” or something like that. It’s fun. It’s great. It’s a great game. You should all get it and play it. I think there’s also a Decrypto online, which works really well.
**John:** Cool. Thanks, guys.
**Craig:** Thank you.
**Megana:** Thank you.
**John:** Bye.
**Craig:** Bye.
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