The Number - Family Game

This little Japanese game doesn’t fit into any single category. You don’t realize how rich The Number is while playing.

The Number is an expert mix of mechanics: Bluffing, Risk-taking, but also Guessing (a mechanic that involves anticipating your opponent’s next moves and adapting your strategy accordingly). It takes 5 minutes to learn, but you won’t have it all figured out yet!

In each of the five rounds of The Number, players choose and write a three-digit number on their secret sheet, hoping to score points based on the numbers that other players have written.

At the start of each round, you write a three-digit number using the digits 0-9, repeating numbers as you wish, but not using any number that you've crossed out in a previous round. Everyone reveals their number at the same time, then you arrange them in order from high to low.

Starting with the highest number, you check to see whether any of the digits in that three-digit number appear in any three-digit number of lower value. If they do, then that player takes back their board and scores nothing; if not, then the player scores points equal to the first digit in that number and places a cross through each digit used in their three-digit number. 

After five rounds, players sum the points they earned over the five rounds. To this sum, they add the quantity of digits that they Xed out. Whoever has the highest score wins!