Trio

A fast, brainy card game. Twelve cards lie face up, each showing one, two, or three symbols that vary in colour, shape, and fill. Your job: spot a TRIO — three cards where, feature by feature, the symbols are either all the same or all completely different. Claim trios as fast as you can before the 90-second clock runs out. Easy to learn, endlessly sharp.

How to play

The board shows twelve cards. Every card has four features: how many symbols it shows (one, two, or three), their colour (red, green, or purple), their shape (diamond, oval, or capsule), and their fill (solid, striped, or empty outline).

A TRIO is any three cards that, for each of the four features separately, are either all identical or all different. For instance, three cards that are all red, all show two symbols, all different shapes, and all different fills form a valid trio — same where they must be same, different where they must be different. The one forbidden pattern is two-and-one: if two cards share a feature and the third does not, those three are not a trio.

Tap three cards to claim them. If they form a trio they flash green, vanish, and fresh cards slide in to replace them — keep going. If they do not, they flash red and you lose two seconds, so look before you tap.

There is always at least one trio on the board; if the twelve cards happen to contain none, three extra cards are dealt automatically. Score one point per trio and find as many as you can before the 90-second clock runs out.

Tips & strategy

Pick two, picture the third. Any two cards have exactly one card that completes a trio with them. Look at two cards, work out what the third must be — same colour or all three colours, same count or all three counts, and so on — then scan the board for that exact card. It is far faster than testing random triples.

Lock down one feature first. Counting is usually the quickest to read: take two cards and decide whether your trio is all-same-count or all-different-count. That immediately fixes what the missing card needs, and the other features fall into place from there.

Don't overlook the all-different trio. Beginners keep hunting for cards that share something, and miss the trios where every single feature differs — three different counts, colours, shapes, and fills at once. Those are just as valid, and usually the ones nobody else spots.

Verify before your third tap. A wrong guess costs two seconds, so run through all four features once you have three cards in mind. Spending an extra moment to confirm beats tapping on a hunch and bleeding time — especially in the closing seconds when every trio counts.