number

Break the Code is a logical deduction game played with number tiles and question cards. You win if you can guess all of your opponent's tiles in a two-player game or if you can guess the face-down tiles in the center for a three- or four-player game. Put on your thinking cap!

Place all of the number tiles face down and shuffle them. Place your game screen in front of you, then randomly take your tiles. Place them face up behind your screen in numerically ascending order starting from the left. If you have two tiles with the same number, place the black tile on the left. Once you have placed your tiles, removed any unused number tiles from the game. Lastly, shuffle the question cards and place them in a pile face down. Draw the top six cards from the pile and place them in the center of the table.

Deduce all of your opponent's tiles (or the center tiles) and correctly guess their colors and numbers in order from left to right.

Gem Rummy is similar to standard Gin Rummy except each card has a background color & gem symbol; Kings have two background colors; (Jokers are included but are not used in hands). Adding colors to each card allows for more interesting combinations (like having all eight gems in hand). Another difference is that (2) 6-sided dice are used at the beginning of each hand to establish the "Knock number", and also the "Diamond number" for a special meld called "Queen's Diamonds".

The object is to get your hand down to a few points of Deadwood by getting Melds.

There are 3 phases to each hand: 1) DEAL & ROLL; 2) CARD PLAY; 3) SHOWDOWN & SCORING.
Cards in Melds and Lay-offs will not score for your opponent, but have no inherent point values themselves. Cards not in Melds or Lay-offs are called Deadwood and might add points to your opponent’s score.

There are 4 different Melds available: Sets, Runs, Stashes, and Queen’s Diamonds (the latter two are new).

SET: At least 3 cards of the same rank (i.e., 5, 5, 5).
RUN: At least 3 consecutive cards in the same suit (i.e., 6, 7, 8, all clubs).
STASH: At least 4 cards of the same gem color (i.e., 4 Emeralds).
QUEEN’S DIAMONDS: Any Queen + one designated Diamond card that is determined by the initial roll number on the dice. Both dice are rolled to find one number (i.e., 3 and 4 = 7, indicating 7 of Diamonds is the card). An “11” or “12” indicates JACK of DIAMONDS.

Also, "Gem Parts" is a bonus players can earn by having all 8 gems at the end of a hand.

A new minimum score rule keeps the game moving along nicely.

—description from the designer

The Game: Face to Face features gameplay similar to The Game with players laying down cards from their hand in ascending and descending piles, but now the game is limited to two players who are competing to get rid of their cards first. You want to win on your own, but to advance, you must inevitably help your opponent...

On your turn, you’ll play at least 2 cards from your hand of 6. The twist comes from where you can play them. Of course, your own ascending and descending piles are fair game and follow the normal rules of The Game.
But exactly once per turn, you can play a card on one of your opponent’s piles, breaking all rules. This ultimately helps them out, as it pushes whatever pile you played on away from its upper limit.

How many spaces can you fill on your scoresheet in Ripple Rush, a quick and simple flip-and-write game?

In the game, you have your own player sheet, which shows four columns of symbols (square, circle, triangle, hexagon), with eight symbols in each column. To set up the game, adjust the deck so that it contains twenty cards per player, with the cards being chosen at random. The full deck contains one hundred cards, with 25 cards for each symbol numbered 1-25.

On a turn, each player draws a card from the deck, then (if possible) you write the number on that card in the column matching the depicted symbol. Numbers must be placed in columns in ascending order so that within each column each number is higher than whatever is below it and lower than whatever is above it, but you can skip spaces in the columns when entering a number.

If you can't place your card's number on your player sheet in the proper column — e.g., you draw a blue 14 and you have no open spaces between a blue 11 and a blue 15 — announce this to everyone before they write down the number on their own card and place your card in the center of the table. After they write their own number, they can also write your number on their score sheet, if possible.

If you complete a row of symbols, then you immediately get the bonus shown on the left edge of the player sheet, either a number (5, 10, 15, 20) that you can write in any valid column or a symbol that you can fill with any valid number.

At game's end, for each column you score points equal to your longest connected sequence of filled-in spaces. In the advanced variant, you draw two of the eight bonus cards, each of which shows one of the rows on the player sheet; for each of these two rows that you fill in completely, you score bonus points.

From the back of the box:

Here's a game that will have you walking, jumping, and hopping all around the house! Ask a player to give you a card with a specific number of steps to take. Then choose an object that you think you can reach in exactly that number. Can you walk to the fridge in 9 steps? How about hop to something that starts with the letter A in 15? Reach your goal and walk away with a win!

Ages 5 and up.

Kids learn estimating distance and spacial relations.