What you have here is a game of Concentration – usually played with a deck of cards – turned into a 3D cubbie full of handbuilt ceramic cups. One side of each cup features a gold bee decal, a tribute to BEE playing cards. The other side features pairs of sgraffito-carved typography symbols called glyphs, with one blank wild cup.
These unique cups are as wonderful to drink from as they are to play with, and filling them with special contents could add to the game’s dynamics.
In case some of the glyphs are unfamiliar to you, here are their names: Ampersand, Asterisk, At Symbol, Dagger, Fleuron, Interrobang, Manicule, Octothorpe, Pointe d’Ironie, Sarc-Mark, Section, Paragraph.
Game Play
Goal: To collect the most matching pairs of cups.
Randomly place a cup in each cubbie space in the shelf (25 in all) with the gold bee decals facing outwards. Players alternate playing and move by turning two cups around at a time to see their glyph sides. If the glyphs match, or if one cup is the blank wild one, the player takes them off the board and counts one pair.
And, as added fun, may keep/use/dispatch any special contents of the cups. Coins? A sip of something? Love notes? You get the idea.
In another variation, a player making a match can go again.
If a play is not a match, the players try to remember what glyph was where and the cups are turned back around to their bee decal side. The next player turns two cups around and so on, until all the possible matches are made.