Detektiv Horch 1987

Main idea: An educational game aimed at teaching/practising the relation between sounds and their written representation in the form of letters. Many primary school children have a hard time differentiating similar sounds, such as German ö - eu - ei. The game is meant to help them by making them listen closely.

Game play: Basic game: Each player gets 6 picture cards and puts them in front of him/herself, face up. The remaining picture cards form a face-down stack at the center of the table. The stack with the 24 face-down letter cards is given to the game master, oldest player, or is passed from one player to the next each turn. The game master (or one of the players) looks at the top letter card and reads the sound. Each player can now discard one of their picture cards if it matches the sound from the letter card. For example, if the letter card is "SCH", the picture cards showing a key, ("Schlüssel"), pig ("Schwein") or frog ("Frosch") can be discarded. A player who doesn't have a matching card has to draw one from the draw deck. If the drawn card matches, he/she may discard it immediately. The first player to get rid of all his/her cards wins the game.

The "expert" variant: Each player gets 8 cards and may discard as many matching cards as they can when it is their turn (rather than just one picture card per sound card).