Logic & Lore – A Deductive Race

You must help get them back in place – but you’re too close to your own stars to see where they belong. You’ll have to depend on information that your rival gives you to get everything positioned.

Logic & Lore is a two-player deduction game that plays in 10-30 minutes. Part of the Wicked & Wise universe from Weird Giraffe Games, Logic & Lore was designed by Darren Reckner and Jason Hager. It can work for adults, or for kids down to about age 8.

Gameplay

Logic & Lore is a logical deduction game. On your turn, you’ll reveal two of your cards to your opponent and ask questions to help you align them correctly. The first player to reveal a correct ordering of their numbers 1-9 wins the game.

Although there are several ways to play, the setup is pretty much always the same. Place the nine alignment cards in order, then each player shuffles their nine number cards and places them face-down on their side, one next to each alignment card.

Simple: Star Light

Play Logic and Lore using the simplest version the first time you play.

On your turn, you may start by re-arranging any of your face-down cards that you choose. Then choose any two face-down cards from your line. Hold them so your opponent can see them, but you cannot.

Then ask the following questions, in order, stopping as soon as your opponent answers “yes” to a question.

• Are either of these cards aligned? (a card number matches the lane it is in)
  • If yes, your opponent points to each aligned card. Flip those face up. Stop asking questions and proceed to the next step.
• Are these cards neighbors? (in sequential order. For example, 5 and 4 are neighbors, no matter which order they’re currently in.)
• Are these cards symmetric? (Do these cards add up to 10? If yes, they should be equally distant from the center card.)
• Which is greater?
  • Your opponent points to the card that is greater in value.

After asking questions, you may again re-arrange any of your face-down cards. Then it is your opponent’s turn.

At the beginning of a turn, you may decide to “Align the Stars”, revealing all of your remaining face-down cards. If they are all in the correct position, you win – but if any cards are not correct, you immediately lose.

Challenge: Star Bright

Once you know how to play, try Star Bright. To play Star Bright, flip the central alignment cards to their question side. Both players get a set of dragon meeples, but otherwise setup is the same.

Before the question phase, place one of your dragon meeples on an unoccupied alignment card between 2-8 (1 and 9 cannot be claimed). Then you may ask ONLY the questions you’ve claimed with your dragons – plus question 1 (“Are either of these cards aligned?”) and question 9 (“Which number is greater?”).

You must ask your questions in ascending-number order, skipping questions you don’t want to ask. Why wouldn’t you want to ask a specific question? Because (as in the simpler version) you must stop asking questions as soon as you get a “yes” answer.

Whenever you find a card that is aligned correctly (question 1) and flip it face-up, you must also remove two of your dragon meeples from the alignment questions.

The game still ends when either player reveals all their cards – if they have correctly aligned all their numbers, they win; otherwise, their opponent automatically wins.

Even More: Varying the Difficulty

If you want even more challenges – or more help – Logic & Lore has you covered.

The game comes with a pile of tracking tokens, which either player can use to help remember the information they’ve learned so far about pairs of cards.

And each player can play with the version that feels appropriate to them. The younger player can play Star Light, while the older plays Star Bright, for example. Players under age 10 can also hold out the card matching their age when shuffling and start the game with it face-up and aligned.

But how about adding more difficulty? That’s where the Blackholes and other extras come in.

Add one or two Blackholes for a harder game. Shuffle them with all of your Star cards before placing then all face down. You’ll have more cards than alignment spaces, so place the extras on the outside of the 1 lane or the 9 lane. Blackhole cards count as nothing and are never aligned. Players always answer “no” about questions that involve a Blackhole – and any number is always greater than a Blackhole. Can you align the nine numbers and leave the Blackhole(s) on the outside?

Red Giants are another variant card, but they’re the opposite of Blackholes – the answer is always “Yes” or “Greater”. Quasar cards even let the opponent lie once per game in answering a question that involves it!

But it still doesn’t end there. Here are more challenge modes to play together:

• Event Horizon – Another alignment card. A player wins when they align a Blackhole with the Event Horizon card.
• Wormhole – Reshuffle and flip all revealed cards whenever a Blackhole is found.
• Shooting Star – A player may place the Shooting Star card across two alignment questions (blocking them) when their opponent aligns a card.
• Wish Upon a Star – Players receive a secret number and collect take-another-turn tokens whenever their opponent shows that number.

Impressions

I enjoy logical deduction games, and the beauty and simplicity of Logic & Lore hooked me from the very first time I played. The cards have a beautiful silver foil on both sides, the dragon meeples are cute, and even the tracking tokens are incredibly well-designed. And then I found out just how much variation is packed into this small box.

Flexible and Formidable

Star Light is best for beginners or children, while Star Bright lets players be more tactical in choosing what kind of questions to ask – and blocking their opponent from asking those same questions.

But it’s more flexible than that. Players do not have to play at the same difficulty, and you can add in extras for each player independently.

This is fantastic to make the game work for any two people who might enjoy it. My teenage son demolishes me at this game, so it’s great to adjust the difficulty for each of us independently. So far our favorite way to play is for him to have two Blackholes while I have only one.

A Stormy Night?

It’s not all a gorgeous night under the stars. I saw three problems with Logic & Lore – but they’re all minor.

First, the rulebook collapses the two main modes of play for efficiency. This can make it tough to learn the first time. And most of the extra modes are not explained in the rulebook, but instead on single cards – which are easy to lose into the deck.

Secondly, I have a quibble with the art for the numbers 6 & 9. This isn’t a problem on the alignment cards, nor when you’re looking at the two numbers next to each other – the 9 is obviously a nine. But when someone picks up their 6 card and asks me questions about it, I struggle to figure out which number it is – every time. I think it’s because the right-side-up 6 is at the bottom of the alignment card, but the top of the hidden number card.

Lastly, Logic & Lore takes up a huge amount of table space. I don’t really mind, because it lets this game feel big in a way that logic games usually don’t. But it means even though this game fits in a pretty small box, we don’t take it anywhere; we only play at home, where we have room to spread everything out.

Logic For Your Family

Logic & Lore is a great choice for a family-weight deduction game. Since it’s about putting numbers in a line, most kids can grasp the basic ideas; and the ability to vary the difficulty wildly between players can make this more “fair” than other logic games we’ve played.

The first print run of Logic & Lore sold out. But Weird Giraffe Games just launched a Kickstarter for the second printing, which also promises an updated rulebook. Check it out and keep your eyes peeled at your friendly local game store to get your copy!

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The Family Gamers received a demo copy of Logic & Lore from the first printing from Weird Giraffe Games for this review.