Rules for Superset (Variant on Set)
Wei-Hwa Huang
You will need: A normal Set deck.
A "Super-set" is four cards such that there exists a fifth card, the
"joint," that forms two intersecting sets with those four cards.
The intersection is always the fifth card. Example:
A. One Green Shaded Squiggle
B. One Red Solid Diamond
C. Three Purple Shaded Diamonds
D. Three Red Hollow Squiggles
This is a super-set; the joint is E. Two Red Shaded Ovals.
ACE is a set, as well as BDE.
Tom Magliery suggests that the five cards composed of a Super-set and
its joint be called a "Bowtie."
A few useful properties of Super-sets that may or may not be immediately
obvious, and are similar to existing properties of Sets:
1. A Super-set NEVER contains three cards that are a set.
(In other words, a super-set never has a set as a subset. Maybe
I should have called them "Non-super-set"s! :-) )
2. Given any three cards that do not form a set, there are EXACTLY
three other cards that will form a super-set with those three.
In the example above, D might have been:
D2. Two Purple Solid Squiggles
D3. Three Green Solid Ovals
(As practive, work out the two corresponding joints for yourself.)
3. If there are three of one and one of another, then it's not
a superset. (E.g., if three cards are purple and the fourth one
isn't, then it's not a superset.) Unlike the corresponding rule
for sets, The converse is NOT true.
4. Given any superset, the joint is unique.
5. There are 63180 supersets in the deck (as opposed to a mere 1080 sets).
6. Let X be any three cards that do not form a set. Let Y be the
three cards that each create a superset with X. Let Z be the
three cards that are the joints of those three supersets.
Then any card in Z creates a superset when joined with the
three cards in Y (and the joint is in X), and any card in X creates
a superset when joined with the three cards in Z (and the
joint is in Y). Also, those nine cards form a "plane" (aka
a "magic square" on the official website).
The rules:
Play just like regular SET, except use only NINE cards, and
look for super-sets. (Nine cards is sufficient to have a good
chance of a super-set existing.) Say whatever you want; in
experience the players tend to stare at those cards a veeery
long time before anyone makes any progress.
Warning: This game is tough!
But it makes a good variant for those players that are finding Sets
way too quickly...
--
Wei-Hwa Huang, whu...@ugcs.caltech.edu, http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~whuang/
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She ran by screaming "No, I run by moving my feet rapidly, you idiot!"
QSCGZ
>
>You will need: A normal Set deck.
>
>A "Super-set" is four cards such that there exists a fifth card, the
>"joint," that forms two intersecting sets with those four cards.
>Play just like regular SET, except use only NINE cards, and
>look for super-sets. (Nine cards is sufficient to have a good
>chance of a super-set existing.) Say
do 9 cards always contain a superset ?