One of the players starts, by thinking of a character and saying: ‘I am not Nebuchadnezzar, I am letter’ where letter is the first letter of the character's name.
The other players think of people in the corpus, and ask questions about characteristics of the people they think of. The questions must not mention the name of the character.
The first player answers questions by identifying a person that the question applies to, and saying, ‘I am not person’
If the first player cannot think of a person that the question applies to, he or she says, ‘I don't know that one’; the questioner then has to say who the question referred to, and if all parties agree that the person is in the corpus, then the questioner gets a free yes-or-no answer question.
The game ends when the questioner can no longer prevaricate, and has to admit that he or she is a person.
The game is harder to describe than to play.
| I am not Nebuchadnezzar, I am T | Thinking of Tintin |
| Do you shunt engines all day? | Thinking of Thomas the Tank engine |
| I am not Topham Hat | Ah, foiled |
| Are you a tank engine? | trying again |
| I am not Thomas the Tank Engine | Can't think of any other Ts that are tank engines |
| Are you a tractor? | Thinking of Bob-the Builder |
| Don't know that one | |
| It's Travis, from Bob the Builder | Questioner gets a free binary-answer question |
| Are you alive or a machine? | Tries to eliminate all the engines in Thomas, the machines in Bob the Builder, etc |
| Living | |
| Are you very bouncy? | |
| I am not Tigger | |
| Do you own a dog called ‘Snowy’? | |
| I am Tintin | Caught at last... |