At Detective Academy, you need to pay attention to the clues being offered by the strange characters seated around the table — i.e., your fellow players — in order to guess the secret word before the other detective can. Detective Academy plays somewhat like a multiplayer game of Password, but with two people trying to guess the secret word and everyone else giving clues. In each round, two players are the detectives; the other players look at one of the 42 puzzle cards and choose one item from the list of possibilities. These players then receive a "clue" card at random, with these cards saying things like "word", "person" or "animal". The player to the left of the detectives must give a clue matching the type of clue listed on her clue card. Each detective can make one guess at the hidden word or phrase, then the next player gives a clue, etc. If no detective has guessed the right answer after twelve clues have been given, the round ends, no one scores, and the detective role shifts around the table. Otherwise, the detective who guessed correctly scores one point and the player who gave the clue scores two points. After everyone has been detective two or four times (depending on the number of players), whoever has the highest score wins.