Set

I first heard about the card game Set about 20 years ago.  The cards looked so harmless but it had a certain word-of-mouth notoriety for being a brain teaser.  But why?  I finally bought a copy.  We already had Five Crowns and Quiddler from the same designer.

It sounds so easy.  Find 3-card matches from the tableau of 12 cards.  Each card has four attributes: color, shape, number and texture.  A match is a set of 3 cards where each of the four attributes is either all the same or all different.  So, you could have three green cards (same color), solid fill (same texture), numbered 1 2 3 (different numbers), and three same/different shapes, that's a match.

The game recommends using the small starter deck to get started, which does not have the texture element.  Once you see the logic of that, mix both decks together, deal out a new set of cards, and start losing your mind.  It really does get complicated.  About 90% of the first hour's worth of matches we tried turned out to be wrong.

It's a lot easier to show that a match is wrong than to find one that's right.  A set of 3 fails is any two cards share any one attribute.  So your set may look fine, but there are two purple one, or two ovals, or two outlines, and dammit, failed again.

The confusing part was the complete formlessness of the game.  There are no turns.  If you think you see a set, say SET, and then nobody can take cards until you make your pick.  To be more exact, you pick cards and the other player probably explains why you're wrong.  If you're right, you get to keeo the three cards and they count as one point at the end of the game.  If you fail, you put the cards back and lose a point.  Aside from that, if the players agree there are no matches left, deal three more cards face-up and keep going.

(I know this is a poor photo.  We set out cards on the hotel bed, trying to figure it out, and it all just felt so hazy.  So, this is how our brains felt at the time.  Better pictures coming in a future post.)



It didn't make sense as written.  With the starter deck, it so so quick and easy, we found matches before the cards were even dealt out, so the dealer had a handicap or not being able to focus as much.

So I hopped on youtube to see some actual game play.  And that was frustrating in a whole different way.  Try searching for the the word "Set".  It's so generic.  "Playing set" will probably give you musicians playing a set of music.  "Set card game" has lots of people explaining HOW to play, including some from 10-12 year old girls who figured it out -- check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkUI5Pi6_8c&t=589s -- but I could not find a single video of actual game play.

The highlight was this fruitless search was this profile of the woman who created the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkUI5Pi6_8c&t=589s It's a top-notch piece from Gizmodo that any gamer can appreciate.

I found two of favorite math channels talking about the wonders of set theory involved:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AeEr9QtDF0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkFX9jUJPKk

I will get back to this soon, I hope.  The difficult of this simlplicity is just a perfect balance.

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