Set Card Game Online: A New Daily Board

Play the Set card game online

Set is a fast pattern spotting card game that sharpens your eye and your logic. Every card shows one, two or three shapes, and each card has four features: colour (red, green or purple), shape (oval, diamond or squiggle), number (one, two or three) and shading (solid, striped or empty). There are 81 cards, one for every possible combination, which is three options to the power of four features.

What makes a set

Three cards are a set when each feature is either the same on all three cards or different on all three. Three red cards showing one, two and three solid diamonds are a set: same colour, same shape, same shading, all different numbers. If two cards are red and one is green, it is not a set, however right everything else looks. That single rule is the whole game, and the reason it takes a minute to learn and years to get fast at.

The rule that makes you faster

Here is the thing most players never notice. Any two cards have exactly one card that completes a set with them. Not several, not none, exactly one, every time. Two red solid ovals and one green solid oval can only be completed by one purple solid oval, because each feature is forced: the colours must finish all different, the numbers must finish all the same, and so on.

This changes how you look at the board. Beginners scan groups of three, and with twelve cards showing there are 220 of those to work through. Strong players pick two cards, work out in their head what the third would have to be, then look for just that card. You go from checking 220 combinations to asking 66 much easier questions, and the answer to each one is a single specific card rather than a judgement.

What usually goes wrong

Almost every missed set is an all different one. The eye is drawn to cards that look alike, so three cards sharing a colour and a shape jump out, while one red striped oval, two green solid diamonds and three purple empty squiggles sit there unnoticed with every single feature different. That is a perfectly legal set and it is the hardest kind to see. When the board looks empty, start deliberately hunting the ones that have nothing in common.

The other common error is calling a set where three features work and the fourth does not. Check all four before you tap. On the daily board a wrong call costs you time you cannot get back.

Four ways to play

The daily board deals everyone the same cards, the same way, wherever they are. You get 3 minutes, and playing each day builds a streak. Time attack is the same 3 minute race on a fresh deal whenever you want one. Relaxed turns the timer off so you can work through the whole deck at your own speed. Race friends puts 2 to 6 players on one shared board in real time, where the first to tap a correct set takes it and a wrong call locks you out for 3 seconds.

A board can genuinely have no set

It is uncommon but it happens, and the game handles it for you by dealing three more cards until a set appears. The interesting part is how far that can go. Mathematicians have shown that you can lay out 20 cards with no set among them, and that 21 is impossible, so a board can get surprisingly crowded before it resolves. If you are staring at fifteen cards and finding nothing, you may not be missing anything.

Free, no download

Set runs in your browser on a phone, a tablet or a computer, with nothing to install and no sign up. Tap three cards to call a set, use a hint when you are properly stuck, and shuffle the board to see the same cards in a new arrangement, which helps more than it sounds like it should.