How to play
You are a locksmith of the Pinholm practice vaults. Each locksmith holds a rack of numbered lock pins that only they can read. Every pin stands in order, the lowest number on the left. The whole team wins together, when every pin is set, or loses together, when the watch bell rings. Nobody gets a personal score.
Your turn
Each seat does one action on its turn. There is no pass.
- Probe. Point at one standing pin in a teammate’s rack, and name a number that you hold on one of your own pins. Tap their pin, then your pin, then Probe.
- A right probe. If their pin has that number, it is set. It lies face up, and all can read it. You set one of your own pins of that number too.
- A wrong probe. The bell moves one step, and a chalk mark with the pin’s real number goes in front of it. If the bell reaches its last step, the team loses. A trap pin rings the bell at once.
- Set all. If you hold every standing pin of one number, you may set them all at once. If every standing pin in your racks is a trap pin, you show them.
Brass, traps and the twin probe
Iron pins have the numbers 1 to 12. Some vaults add brass pins, which you probe for as one group called “brass”, and trap pins, which ring the bell the moment you probe them. The vault door lists which brass and trap numbers are in play. Once in every vault, each seat may use the twin probe: it points at two pins of one rack instead of one. A trap pin in a twin probe never rings the bell.
Tools and chalk marks
In the first opening move, each seat chalks one iron pin, so the team can read its number. From vault 3 up, a vault hangs some tools on a board. A tool unlocks when two pins of its number are set, and it can be used once. The tools chalk pins, swap pins, move the bell back, call the roll, and more.
The vaults
There are eight vaults, from a small practice vault with 24 pins to a full vault with brass, traps and tools. All eight are open from the start. Pick one in the lobby.
At the online table
- Tap a pin in a teammate’s rack, tap one of your pins to name its number, and tap Probe. On a keyboard: the arrows move along the racks, Enter picks a pin, T is the twin probe, E sets all of a number, and Space sends the move.
- Players may not tell each other their numbers. Chat is preset phrases only, and none of them names a number or a pin.
- Each decision has a 60-second timer. If it runs out, the table plays the safe move for you.
- An empty seat is taken by a bot, always marked as a bot.
Why it is fair
A secret seed decides the lead seat and the order of the pins. You see its fingerprint when the game starts and the seed itself when it ends, so you can check it. Verify a game.