Association Circle

How to play

1. 1

   Association Circle is for 3–12 players. The group creates one shared chain over exactly three complete circuits: with N starting players, the server reserves 3 × N turns, giving everyone three opportunities.

2. 2

   Before play, the server randomizes and locks the circular order and selects one of 96 original neutral starting concepts. Everyone can see it, it has no author, and it does not consume a turn.

3. 3

   On your turn, submit one association specifically linked to the latest accepted word or phrase; the starting concept is the anchor until the first answer arrives. A link may be direct, figurative, or personal—the group judges whether it fits.

4. 4

   An answer contains 1–60 Unicode code points after NFKC normalization and whitespace collapse. It must contain a letter or digit; control, invisible, private-use characters and answers made only of punctuation or emoji are rejected.

5. 5

   The server checks order, format, and repeats while ignoring case, extra spaces, and boundary punctuation. The starting concept cannot be repeated either; the app deliberately does not judge semantic similarity or synonyms.

6. 6

   An accepted association appears immediately in the public chain with its author and cannot later be edited, deleted, or reordered. The turn then passes to the next participant in the locked circle.

7. 7

   Each turn lasts 45 seconds, and the active player may skip sooner. A skip or timeout uses one of the 3 × N opportunities without creating a blank entry; the next association still links to the latest accepted node. Anyone joining after the start observes until the next match.

8. 8

   The match ends immediately after the last turn of the third circuit, even if some turns were skipped. The result is the starter plus every accepted association; there is no winner, personal ranking, or point award, and room scores do not change.