Detective Dessert

A true criminal has performed the most heinous of crimes! They have secretly assigned a number to different types of ice cream! Oh no!

You are a team of expert dessert detectives. You can’t talk to each other because, erm, you’re too busy eating ice cream. So you’ll have to use math and logic to figure out what numbers other players are holding.

Can you crack the … Gelacode?

This is a cooperative deduction game playable by young and old. Every ice cream has a distinct shape, so you can recognize it from behind (even when inside another player’s hand). On the other side, hidden to the other players, are numbers (1–25). When you receive your ice cream, you sort them by number (low to high).

Fortunately, every ice cream type has a simple “rule” about what number it could be. For example, one ice cream might say “only multiples of 5” (5, 10, 15, …) or “only squares” (1, 4, 9, …). If you see the square ice cream in someone’s hand, you have a hint as to what number it might be.

With these two pieces of information (shape+sorted), you can think hard and check other player’s hands to figure out the numbers they’re holding! Guess all of them right and you win the game (together)! Guess too many wrong, and you’ve lost. Which means, of course, that you pick a different combination of ice cream cards and try again ;)

The game contains a variant for kids who struggle with that initial step (sorting from low to high). It also contains two expansions that add fireworks (… metaphorically), such as ice cream that changes its number depending on what else you’re holding. As usual, it also contains easy ways to make your very first game even simpler and faster, such as only using numbers up to 10 or 15 (instead of the full 25).

Most of all, it’s a very simple game that still provides a real tough logic/math challenge for everyone—together. Have fun!