BOMBANANA! Mute Monkey Guide

The game gives Mute Monkey the manual and takes away the voice. The actual problem is more specific than that: your only correction path is visual — gestures that only reach Deaf Monkey when they are actively watching you. This page covers four things: why gesture-only output fails in specific situations, how to handle each failure mid-round, what to agree before the first round, and how to find signal failures after the round ends.

Mute Monkey has no hearing restriction — that belongs to Deaf Monkey. You can hear every word the team says, including when Deaf Monkey relays your answer incorrectly. But the only tool you have for fixing a wrong relay is another gesture.

Your output is visual; your input is audio

Mute Monkey is the only role where the send channel and the receive channel are completely different. You can hear the whole team. You cannot speak. That means you receive information through audio and send it through gestures alone — a one-way visual stream that only reaches Deaf Monkey when they are watching you at the right moment.

This matters because the team's natural communication mode is voice. Blind Monkey speaks. Deaf Monkey speaks. When something needs to be corrected fast, every other role can say it out loud. You cannot. Deaf Monkey watches both the bomb display and your gestures simultaneously — when their attention shifts to the bomb, a gesture you send at that moment goes unseen.

A practical rule for this role: do not treat a gesture as received until you see evidence that Deaf Monkey acted on it correctly. Until then, you have no confirmation it was seen, understood, or relayed accurately.

When you hear the wrong answer being relayed

Because you can hear Deaf Monkey speak, you will sometimes hear your own gesture misread and relayed incorrectly to Blind Monkey. You signaled "third option" but Deaf says "second option." You heard the error. Your only correction tool is a gesture — and Deaf Monkey is now looking at the bomb, not at you.

The failure runs like this: Deaf relays the wrong instruction. Blind Monkey acts. The bomb state changes. You were trying to signal "stop" the entire time, but no one saw it.

The prevention is not a faster gesture — it is a pre-agreed check habit. Before Blind Monkey acts on any instruction, Deaf Monkey turns to check you for a confirm or stop signal. That habit must be agreed before the round, because you cannot request it mid-round. You cannot say it.

The stale-gesture problem

Blind Monkey acts on the bomb. The bomb changes state. Your last gesture described the previous state.

Nothing resets your "current gesture" automatically. Deaf Monkey reads the bomb screen; you read the manual. When the bomb state changes after Blind's action, you learn about it by hearing Deaf describe the new display — not by looking at it directly. Until you hear that description and re-locate the new manual path, you may still be holding the posture you formed for the previous answer.

This guide calls this the stale-gesture problem: a signal that was accurate when you formed it, but no longer matches what the bomb is currently showing. The two inputs Deaf Monkey watches — the bomb's current visible state and your gesture describing the previous state — now disagree. Deaf has to choose which one to relay, without knowing your gesture has gone stale.

The fix requires one specific pre-round agreement: a "discard my last gesture" signal — visually distinct from "wait," "no," and "stop" — that means "ignore what I just showed you; I am re-reading the manual and will signal again." The Deaf Monkey guide describes why this signal matters from the other side of the exchange.

Signaling a multi-step answer

Some manual paths require more than one piece of information: a rule, then an option, then an order. You cannot say all three as one sentence. You have to chain gestures.

Chaining gestures without a structure has a predictable failure mode: Deaf Monkey receives the first gesture, starts forming the relay callout, and misses the second gesture because they are no longer watching you. The natural temptation is to send the first piece immediately — it is the most important part and the team is waiting. But a relay built on one piece of a multi-part answer is a wrong relay.

A structure that reduces this risk:

1. Signal "wait" to tell Deaf Monkey you are about to send a sequence, not a single answer.
2. Signal the first piece. Pause. Watch for Deaf Monkey to look at you and nod.
3. Signal the second piece. Pause again. Wait for the nod.
4. Signal "end of sequence" to tell Deaf Monkey the full answer has been sent and is ready to relay.

Without a "start of sequence" signal, Deaf Monkey may treat your first gesture as the complete answer and begin relaying before you finish. The "end of sequence" signal matters just as much — it marks when the full answer is ready, not just when the latest piece arrives.

Signaling that you are still looking

Sometimes the manual path is not immediately clear. Two rules might apply, or a condition depends on information you have not yet heard reported. Under timer pressure, Deaf Monkey is watching you, Blind Monkey is waiting, and your only available move is to stall without collapsing the round.

"Wait" and "I don't know yet" must be different signals with visually distinct forms. "Wait" means: I have the answer, hold for a moment. "I don't know yet" means: stop everything — do not act on the last complete gesture I sent, because I am still reading and it may be stale.

If both signals look the same, Blind Monkey has no way to know whether to hold for one second or ten. Worse: staying still while you search looks identical to "wait" from Deaf Monkey's position — which means Deaf may act on the last gesture rather than holding.

When you signal "I don't know yet":

1. Deaf Monkey stops the current module description and holds — this stops Blind Monkey from acting on partial information.
2. If you need the current bomb state re-described, use your pre-agreed "tell me again" gesture directed at Deaf Monkey.
3. Once you have the full answer, signal "wait" before your answer sequence — not the answer directly. Deaf may have started speaking to fill the silence, and needs to finish that sentence and stop before you begin sending.
4. Then proceed with your answer.

One rule that prevents most uncertainty failures: do not start gesturing options until you have the complete answer. An incomplete gesture looks like a real signal from Deaf Monkey's position. Starting to gesture before you have finished reading is how a partial answer gets relayed as a confirmed one.

Six agreements before the first round

Run through these six items out loud before your first round. Each one prevents a specific failure from the sections above. Do not skip them on casual attempts — the failures they prevent happen most often in low-pressure rounds where no one thinks a plan is needed.

1. What "discard my last gesture" looks like. When the bomb state changes mid-gesture, your in-progress signal becomes invalid. Agree on one visually distinct gesture — different from "wait," "no," and "stop" — that means "ignore what I just showed you; I am re-reading and will start again." No other agreed signal covers this case.
2. What "I don't know yet" looks like, separate from "wait." The failure this prevents: you stay still while searching the manual, Deaf reads the silence as a brief pause, and acts on the last complete gesture you sent — which may now be stale. "I don't know yet" must visually force Deaf to stop completely, not just pause.
3. What "start of sequence" and "end of sequence" look like. When a module answer requires more than one gesture, Deaf Monkey needs to know you are building a chain and when the chain is complete. Agree on both signals and make them visually distinct from each other and from "wait."
4. The check habit: Deaf looks at you before Blind acts. After Deaf relays your answer, Deaf checks you for a confirm or stop signal before Blind touches anything. This is your only wrong-relay correction window — you cannot speak the fix. Agree on this as a standing rule for the session, not something you request per round.
5. What "tell me again" looks like. The signal you use when you need Deaf to re-describe the current bomb state. Different from "I don't know yet" (which halts everything) and different from "wait" (which means the answer is coming). This closes the information gap when a critical detail was unclear the first time.
6. Which direction counts as "first" for ordered options. Agree on one rule for horizontal layouts (left to right) and one for vertical layouts (top to bottom), and keep both fixed for the whole session. An ordering disagreement means the wrong option gesture gets sent — and the only correction path is another gesture that requires Deaf to be watching. Agreeing on a fixed order eliminates a failure that has no verbal fallback.

Signal failures and why they happen

Each failure below has a reason a reasonable player would make it — the situation creates a specific pressure to skip the correct step. The "why it looks reasonable" column documents that pressure so the failure is predictable rather than surprising.

Failure	Why it looks reasonable at the time	What breaks
Gesturing before Deaf Monkey is watching you.	You have the answer and want to send it immediately. Holding the gesture until Deaf looks your way feels like stalling when the team is waiting.	Deaf misses the gesture, does not know they missed it, and either relays guesswork or continues as if the previous answer still applies.
Not sending the "discard" signal after a bomb state change.	The bomb just changed, but the next manual step is already obvious. Re-gesturing from scratch feels redundant when the path is clear.	Deaf is watching a gesture that describes a state that no longer exists. The relay they build from it will be wrong.
Treating the first gesture in a chain as the complete answer.	The first piece is the most critical part. Sending it immediately lets the team start moving rather than waiting for the full sequence.	Deaf starts relaying before the sequence is done. Blind acts on one piece of a multi-part answer.
Continuing to gesture while Deaf is mid-callout to Blind.	You have the next step ready. Sending it while Deaf is speaking seems efficient — they can catch it when they finish.	Deaf is not watching you. The gesture goes unseen. When Deaf finishes and looks back, the timing of the gesture is ambiguous — was it for the current step or the next?
Staying still instead of signaling "I don't know yet."	Silence might read as "still thinking — wait." A mixed or partial signal seems more confusing than saying nothing.	Deaf does not know whether to hold the team or whether you are frozen on the manual. Blind waits under timer pressure with no information about how long to hold.

Post-round: finding signal failures you could not detect mid-round

During the round, most signal failures are invisible to you. You can hear Deaf Monkey's relays — but if a relay sounds approximately correct, you have no way to know whether Deaf misread your gesture and landed on the right instruction by coincidence. Post-round review is the only window to surface these.

Question	What failure it surfaces
Was there a moment when you were gesturing and Deaf was not watching you?	Gestures sent into a void — Deaf either missed them or filled in the gap with guesswork.
Was there a moment when Deaf relayed something wrong, you heard it, but Blind had already acted?	Wrong-relay correction failure — the check habit before Blind acted was skipped or arrived too late.
Did you hold a gesture that described the previous bomb state after Blind's action changed the display?	Stale-gesture relay — Deaf merged your old answer with a new bomb state.
Was there a moment you were still searching the manual while Deaf and Blind were waiting?	Uncertainty signal gap — if the team held cleanly, the "I don't know yet" protocol worked. If they acted on partial information, the signal was not received or was unclear.
Did any multi-step answer get cut short because Deaf started relaying before you finished?	Missing "start of sequence" or "end of sequence" signal — a partial answer was treated as complete.