Polite Dissent

Sleuth is a great family game. It is a fairly straightforward mystery game — basically an advanced version of Clue. There are 36 gems cards which are divided into four colors (yellow, green, red and blue), three gemstones (opals, diamonds and pearls) and three denominations (single, pair and cluster). One gem card is hidden and the rest are dealt out among the players.

Each player is also dealt four cards from the question desk. Each turn they can ask a question from one of their cards to another player, to determine which cards that player has. The questioner gets to see the cards (if any) which answer his question, while the other players simply hear the number. For example, Player A might ask how many “opal pairs” does Player B have? Player B would announce “one” and show this card to Player A. Thre rest of the players don’t get to see the card, but may be able to deduce what it is based on past guesses. Player A now draws another question card, and the play passes to next plater. Slowly, though logic, a player is able to determine which card is missing and win the game.

A new version of Sleuth has recently been released. I would recommend tracking down one of the original editions because the cards are less busy and easier to read.