How does Dobble work?
I want you to figure out how you design Dobble so that every single time you turn over a card it has one and only one match between any 2 cards.
Let’s start with some guesses and then begin working up.
1. Guesstimation
Grab a notebook or start a note on a computer dedicated to this task. Write down your guessed answers to these questions:
- How many images are there per Dobble card?
- How many different images are used in total in a Dobble set?
- How many Dobble cards are there?
- Could there be any more Dobble cards?
- How would you go about making the cards so that you always have one and only 1 match between any 2 cards?
2. Starting small
Now let’s start tackling this in a small and simple way:
- What’s the smallest number of images you could have on a card to play Dobble?
- Obviously 1 wouldn’t work. I mean you could have any number of cards in a set with 1 image on them and you could always guarantee each card would have 1 and only 1 match on it. But you’d also have more than one identical card in the pack, and the real Dobble never has 2 totally identical cards.
- So what about 2 images?
- How many cards could we produce? (n)
- How many different images would you need? (r)
- Draw the cards. How can you know that you have all the cards you need?