Go Fish

A children's Go Fish by a pond on a summer morning. The cards are thirteen clay animals (a cat, a dog, a fox, an owl, a frog, a bear, a bunny, a duck, a pig, a sheep, a turtle, a whale and a bee), and across the mat sit Ines and Otto, two clay players who have done this before. Everyone gets seven cards. On your turn you ask one of them for an animal you already hold; if they have any, they hand over every one and you ask again. If they have none, you go fish: draw from the pond, and if you draw the very animal you asked for, you go again. Four of an animal is a set, laid down on the mat. When all thirteen sets are made, the most sets wins.

How it plays

Tap an animal in your hand to pick it (every card of that animal lifts), then tap Ask Ines or Ask Otto, or tap their name across the mat. The slab in the middle tells you what happened, beat by beat ("Ines, do you have any cats?" "Go fish!"), and the two take their turns the same way. When one of them asks you for an animal, your cards go over by themselves; there is no bluffing in Go Fish.

Ines and Otto remember what everyone asks for and what everyone is handed, the way anyone at a real table would, and they ask for what they know you have. They do not see your cards.

Tips

Asking for an animal tells the table you hold it, so ask for the ones you are close to a set of first and get them down. Listen when the others ask each other: an animal Otto asked for is one Otto holds, and if you hold it too, it is yours for the asking. A set scores a hundred, the win three hundred more.

For grown-ups

This is one of the two games on the site made for children (Memory is the other). The clay is the same sculpted clay as everywhere else; the pond, the animals and the words are for a child. There is nothing to buy, nothing to sign up for and nothing a child can type that anyone else will see.

Play Go Fish (free, in the browser; back to all games)