Our Animal Memory Game

This is about a game that one of my sons and I play. We say words to each other to choose moves in a series of alternating steps. Here is an example (“M” is for my move, and “S” is my son’s move).

M chicken
S octopus
M elephant
S rabbit
M rat
S bat
M pig
S cow
M frog

The result is a draw; neither of us won.

The trick to this game is to keep the animals played in your memory and visualize where the moves are. Previously we came up with a matrix of animal names to represent different places in relation to each other.

\| Pig	\| Cow	\| Rabbit
\| Bat	\| Chicken	\| Rat
\| Elephant	\| Frog	\| Octopus

This is like playing a game of tic-tac-toe (or noughts and crosses or Xs and Os by other names). We are trying to get three in a row, but without writing it down and just keeping it in our heads. It is more challenging, but this makes it more fun, and it is probably good memory practice.

Years ago, my brother and I played something similar a few times but in three dimensions. We had to have a “gravity rule” where the position(s) below had to be played first, or there were just too many ways to move with no way to block a win by the first player.