Set (game)

Set! redirects here. Set! is also a special form in the Scheme programming language.

Set is a real-time card game designed by Marsha Falco in 1974 and published by Set Enterprises in 1991. The deck consists of 81 cards varying in four features: number (one, two, or three); symbol (diamond, squiggle, oval); shading (solid, striped, or open); and color (red, green, or purple).[1] Each possible combination of features (e.g., a card with three striped green diamonds) appears precisely once in the deck.

Contents

History

The game evolved out of a coding system that the designer used in her job as a geneticist.[2] Set won American Mensa's Mensa Select award in 1991 and placed 9th in the 1995 Deutscher Spiele Preis.

Games

Several games can be played with these cards, all involving the concept of a set. A set consists of three cards which satisfy all of these conditions:

The rules of Set are summarized by: If you can sort a group of three cards into "Two of ____ and one of _____," then it is not a set.

Given any two cards from the deck, there will be one and only one other card that forms a set with them. One example of a set would be these three cards:

In the standard Set game, the dealer lays out cards on the table until either twelve are laid down or someone sees a set and calls "Set!" The most cards you can lay out are 15. The player who called "Set" takes the cards in the set and the dealer continues to deal out cards until twelve are on the table. If a player sees a set among the twelve cards, they call "Set" and take the three cards, and the dealer lays three more cards on the table. It is possible that there is no set among the twelve cards; in this case, the dealer deals out three more cards to make fifteen dealt cards, or eighteen or more, as necessary. This process of dealing by threes and finding sets continues until the deck is exhausted and there are no more sets on the table. At this point, whoever has collected the most sets wins.

Basic Combinatorics of Set

References

  1. ^ "How to Play Set". http://www.setgame.com/set/rules_set.htm. 
  2. ^ http://www.setgame.com/set/history.htm
  3. ^ Benjamin Lent Davis and Diane MacLagan. "The Card Game Set". http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~maclagan/papers/set.pdf. 
  4. ^ a b c d "SET Probabilities Revisited". http://henrikwarne.com/2011/09/30/set-probabilities-revisited/. 

External links