Trios
Pick three cards where colour, shape, number and shading are each all the same or all different.
How to play
- Every card has four features: colour, shape, number of symbols and shading.
- Three cards make a trio when every feature is either the same on all three cards or different on all three.
- Tap three cards. If they make a trio they fly away and new cards are dealt in their place.
- If they don’t, the game tells you which feature has two the same and one different.
- Stuck? Hint lights up one card of a trio, and a second press shows the whole trio. Find five trios to finish.
What it trains
- Holding several rules in mind at once and checking every card against all of them
- Seeing a relation that runs across three things rather than a match between two
- A table that always has an answer on it, so every search ends in a find
Trios is a pattern game you solve by looking. Every card has a colour, a shape, a number of symbols and a shading, and three cards make a trio when each of those is either the same on all three or different on all three — three red cards holding one, two and three solid circles, say, or three cards that differ in everything. Twelve cards are on the table and there is always at least one trio among them; tap three, and if they fit they fly off and new cards take their place. Pick three that don’t, and the game tells you which feature broke the pattern. Five trios make a session.
The science behind it
Peer-reviewed studies this exercise draws on.
- Differential effects of reasoning and speed training in children Mackey, Hill, Stone & Bunge (2011). Developmental Science, 14(3), 582–590.
- Intensive reasoning training alters patterns of brain connectivity at rest Mackey, Miller Singley & Bunge (2013). Journal of Neuroscience, 33(11), 4796–4803.
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