The next caller already knows what you charged the last one.

Two ways to bill Dell

Dell Harrow rings first. Cracked sash pane, back bedroom. He taped it himself "to the mil", and tape numbers are always right, so you can cut straight off them and save ten minutes.

Do that, bill him FAIR ($70), and Dell runs a thumb down the putty line. "That'll do. That'll do nicely." He's happy. Happy is goodwill 1, and nobody he knows ever rings you.

Now start over and measure it anyway. Ten minutes, and he stands there and watches you measure twice. Same $70. That's goodwill 2, and two rings later Rosa Harrow from the same street is on the phone:

“Dell gave me your number. He said you charged fair for the sash. Measured twice, too.” ROSA HARROW'S CARD, RING 3 · GAME TEXT

That's the game. A sentence about you, in someone else's mouth, built from what you actually did.

(You can also get Rosa by billing Dell LOW. Her card says you were "cheap and tidy with the sash", and she pays whatever you ask, which feels like a lot of pressure for a kitchen window.)

Most choice games tell you a choice mattered. This one has a neighbour say it to your face.

A ring, start to finish

The phone shows 1 to 4 cards: who's calling, what broke, the fair price and how they measured it. TAPE is always right. A HAND-SPAN has a 40% chance of being off, a GUESS 80%. Measure first (10 minutes, +1 goodwill, never wrong) or cut straight off their numbers and risk a scrapped pane.

Anyone you know who doesn't get taken rings back once (SECOND TRY). Leave them twice and they ring Glassco, and tell somebody why. Strangers just hang up.

Then the bill. Five notches:

You start with $20 and one sheet of each size. An L sheet at the yard is $80. If the word on the street is good, the yard puts one sheet on the slate, and the slate comes off your score at six. Give every job away and you'll still get the big one done. You just won't have much to show for it.

Who rings next is up to you

Everything you do goes in a small record (the book), and the book decides who rings.

• End a job on goodwill 2 or more and that person gives a named friend your number. The friend rings two rings later. Their card is green, and it quotes you.
• End on −1 or worse (or turn up without the glass) and they tell someone. That person's card opens WARNED ABOUT YOU, and they won't pay past fair.
• Overcharge a friend somebody sent you, and the somebody hears what you charged. Their goodwill drops a point after the fact.
• Anyone nobody sent you haggles: 1.15× fair at most. For strangers that moves with the word on the street.

Nine named people live in Harwick. Three ring on their own. The other six only exist if somebody gives them your number.

What the bots found

Short version: the bots that measured and priced for the referral did best. Gouging and giving it away both came up short, gouging by less.

Nobody outside my test scripts has played REFERRAL yet, so these are bots: seven fixed play styles, run through the game's own code on 60 different Tuesdays each. Score is the cash in the van at six, minus anything on the slate, plus $30 for everyone who'll ring you again.

Three stars is 410. Neither end of the dial got there once in 60 tries.

The odd one is GOUGE. It scores 267 on every single seed, because it meets the same three people (Dell, Agnes and Kwame) and then nobody else it knows ever rings. By ring 4 its van is empty, the only calls left are strangers out of the book, and the bot is too dumb to buy glass for them. A smarter gouger would do better. Not a lot better: strangers haggle.

CAREFUL averages 5 points more than the coach's way, but the coach's way gets three stars more often (77% of Tuesdays to 67%). Measuring a TAPE job you didn't need to measure buys a point of goodwill, and that point lets you charge a notch higher and still get passed on. Both bots get Rosa every time; CAREFUL bills Dell FAIR for her, the coach's way bills LOW.

Nine people, and what they say about you

Everybody in Harwick gets about one line, and the lines are good. Agnes presses a jar of chutney on you. Kwame won't let you leave without chips. June at the library files your number under G.

When it goes badly, it goes badly in a specific way. The vicar pays from the roof fund, and you can see the thermometer poster from where you're standing. Paul pays and puts your name on the board behind the bar. Not the good board.

Martin, the caretaker at Harwick Primary, has the biggest job in town: a $160 classroom window, before the kids are back. More than one person can send him to you. I'm not going to tell you who.

Honest gripes

• The full game needs a keyboard. It doesn't take taps. On a phone, the box at the top of this page is the whole game: same code, same people, just buttons instead of keys. (It doesn't have Bev, the coach on speakerphone. The full game does.)
• Nobody outside my test scripts has played it. I can't tell you how long an afternoon takes a person. There's no timer, so it's as long as you think.
• One afternoon is the whole thing. Seven rings, a score, then another Tuesday. The town stays the same; the traffic, the strangers and whose eyeballing is off change with the seed.
• Kwame gets lost a lot. On every afternoon the coach's bot plays, his chip-shop door is outranked two rings running and he rings Glassco. So Paul and Tess, who come through Kwame, never ring for the bots. You can reach them. You have to want to.
• No music. A phone ring, a glass cut and a till.