Staff Says Text: Ruben Hoeksma A very mathematical card game: SET (and SUPERSET) I am aware that this is one of the most corny phrases of the last year, but we live in strange times. Most of us long for social activities that do not involve a screen, but we settle for replica’s of those activities with a screen. Personally, I like to play board games and, while playing games over the table is almost always preferable to playing them behind a computer screen, you don’t get to play over the table with friends that do not live close to you. Here, I want to talk to you about the game SET and one of its variants, SUPERSET, which I got to play with some of my friends again during this period. The game SET Some of you, or maybe even most of you, will know the card game SET. For those that do not, let me introduce you. SET is a game played with a special deck of cards. Each card has four attributes: the number, shading, color1 and type of the displayed shape(s). Each of these attributes can take three values (see Table 1), and each of the possible 34=81 combinations of these values is contained exactly once as a card in the deck (see Figure 12).
As such you have a card three open blue diamonds, a card two striped purple squiggles and a card one solid orange oval (see Figure 2).
1. In the original game red, green and purple. 2. The SET symbols and cards are copyrights of the publisher, therefore I have used my self-created versions of them for the figures.
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A SET consists of three cards that, in each of the attributes, are all equal or all different. Thus, one solid blue squiggle, two solid blue squiggles and three solid blue squiggles form a SET, since all three cards are solid blue squiggles and each card has a different number of shapes (see Figure 3).
The game starts with twelve cards
face-open in the middle of a table of (any number of) players. The players look for a SET within the twelve cards. If a player finds one, they shout “SET!” and point out the SET to the other players. If it is indeed a SET, the player receives the three cards and they are replaced by three fresh cards. If at any point the cards on the table do not contain a SET (or the players cannot find it) three more cards are added. When all cards have been turned open and no SET is left in the cards on the table, the game ends and the player with the most cards wins. This game with very simple rules is a lot of fun, can be played with almost anyone and is very addictive. If you want to try it out right now,
