Three of a Crime Game – Cards…Crooks…Deduction!

This game is for 2-6 players ages 8 and up. This game requires you to use your skills of deduction.

Affiliates Links Included

The idea behind this game is that one of these funny looking people is the bad guy and the players need to figure out who it is based on some very basic clues.

There are 35 suspect cards and each has three suspects on it. There is a lot of overlap as there is only 7 different suspects. There are 20 number tokens like the ones shown above but all are 0s, 1s or 2s.

The game will look something like this during play (except the eyewitness card isn’t laid down on the table but is kept secret in the eyewitnesses hand.)

Steps to Playing Three of a Crime Game

1. The eyewitness picks a card and secretly looks at it. They do NOT lay it down or show the others. I only did that above so you could see how it works.
2. Suspect 1 (going clockwise around the table) picks a card and lays it down for everyone to see.
3. The Eyewitness secretly compares the two cards and sees how many people on the suspects card matches the eyewitness card. (in the example below, the first suspect card (on the left) has one matching person – Louie St. Louis)
4. The eyewitness places a number on the suspect card to indicate how many are correct. They do NOT indicate WHICH is the right one or place it overtop of the characters so that they can’t be seen.
5. Play continues with the next person picking a card and the eyewitness indicating with the tokens how many if any match.
6. At any point during the round when a detective believes he has figured out the three guilty suspects (the ones shown on the eyewitness card) he may make an accusation by stopping the game and saying “Accusation!” He then says the three suspects he believes are on the eyewitness card.
7. If it is correct the eyewitness shows her card and it ends the round. The detective who made the correct accusation wins the card as a reward and places it face down beside him.
8. If it is wrong, the detective who made the accusation is OUT for the round. Play continues until someone makes a correct accusation or until all detectives are eliminated.

Each new round is started by shuffling the cards and the player to the left of the last eyewitness is the new eyewitness. Play rounds until one player collects three suspect cards. They are the winner. The game includes special rules for two players and a variation for two if you want.

This is a fun game of whodunnit and playing will increase your visual thinking skills.

See Where You Can Buy Three of a Crime Game