Cat Crimes

 CAT CRIMES was an unexpected surprise that we found in the kid section at Barnes & Noble.  It turned out not to be a head-to-head game but a series of logic puzzles to sort out with the cute little props provided.

The rules say to take turns and read the clues to each other and keep track of who solved more cases, but it turned out we both had more fun solving the puzzles together.  The cards range from Beginner to Expert difficulty.  The clues get increasingly more cryptic as the difficulty goes up.  A beginner clue might be "Ginger is seated next to Tom Cat", while an expert clue might be "No cat with blue eyes is seated next to a claw mark" ... there are two cats with blue eyes, two claw marks ... but there always does end up being one solution that fits all the clues.  Flip the card and see if you figured out which cat did the deed.  The Expert ones are seriously tricky.  

The fact that there are two seats at each side of the cat table and one seat at each end leads to some fine logical deductions.  For example, if Ginger is seated across from one cat but three seats away from a different cat, then Ginger cannot be at either end of the table, because from there, the opposite end is three seats apart.  From the side seats, the opposite seats are two seats away, never three.

One thing to watch out for: the rule book has VERY specific definitions of being "near" a clue versus being "next to" a clue.  Make sure you check their overall diagram before trying the Advanced or Expert cards.  That detail will trip you up.

For a total impulse buy on a bored, pandemic Saturday, this was a surprise winner for us.  No pile of little pieces to fuss with, no complex setup, just cute cardboard cats doing puzzling things.