Metadata Detective¶

Each player draws a picture of a person, place, photo, or thing on a card and keeps it face-down. On the back, they write three pieces of metadata: not what the picture shows, but information about it. A photograph of a cat taken in a kitchen on a Tuesday morning might have metadata like “taken at 7am”, “on an iPhone”, “in a kitchen”. Players swap cards. Using only the three clues on the back, each player tries to guess what the picture on the front shows.

The scoring works the other way round from most games. Guess correctly and you take a point from the person who drew the card, because their metadata gave too much away. Guess wrong and the drawer takes the point. That reversal is the whole point, and the field cards are what keep it working.

The three clues cannot be invented. Before writing, the drawer turns up five field cards from the list and has to answer three of them, truthfully, about their own picture. Without that, the winning move is to write nothing worth reading, and the game rewards having no metadata rather than choosing which metadata to give away.

Players usually discover they have written metadata that is far too revealing. The time of day, the device, and the location together tell you almost everything about the photograph. Then they start experimenting with what three pieces of metadata would give the least away.

Metadata is the information about a file that travels with it everywhere, even after you have been careful about the content: who created it, when, on what device, and sometimes where. Your own photographs carry it too, and stripping it before sharing is a short job on a phone.

The conversation about what makes metadata revealing often outlasts the game itself.

What you need¶

Cards with a front and a back that cannot be read through, and pens.

Example cards¶

The picture goes on the front, the three clues on the back. Neither says what the other is.

The field cards¶

Nine of them. Five are turned up each round, and three of those five get answered.

time of day · day of the week · indoors or out · which device · who else was there · how far from home · the weather · how often this happens · what else was taken then

Answering all nine would give the picture away every time. Choosing freely from all nine would mean never answering anything.

Example cards¶

The last three give away more than their pictures do.

Last reviewed: 2026-07-08.