Then you will give one more clue. This time a two word clue. So perhaps I’ll say “Sea Foam” to be more specific with this color. Now players will take their second pawn and place it on the board where they think Sea Foam is best represented. It may be close to their original guess or not. Of course, you can’t just say “green.” First off… that is a terrible clue. There are like 20 different shades of green on the board. Also, the rules specifically disallow color words. You also can’t describe something in the room that people can see. It’s got to be more like a feeling. “Herbaceous,” maybe. Or “dusty.”

In fact, when playing with that group we don’t stop with just being the cue-giver twice. We just keep going until our lunch break is over. When I first read about the game, my initial thought was that the game wouldn’t have long-lasting legs to stand on. A game about guessing colors? How long before that completely loses its punch? Giving the perfect clue to describe exactly the shade you are aiming for can feel especially rewarding. After choosing the color that they will use for the round, the cue giver has to try and come up with a one-word cue to describe the color they chose. The cue giver for this round chose the color H 15. They decided to give the one word cue “pig”. After the cue giver gives their second cue, the other players get to place their remaining piece on the gameboard. For their two word cue, the cue giver decided to say “cotton candy”. The rest of the players then made their second guesses.

Each player then scores the two pieces they placed on the gameboard. They will score points based on where their pieces are located in relation to the color for the round. Hues and Cues is the award-winning vibrant game of colorful communication where players are challenged to make connections to colors with words. Since everyone imagines colors differently, connecting colors and clues has never been this much fun!

Teachers can get creative with different ways to use this color game as a center during rotations. One idea would be to open the game board and post some cues for the colors you want students to guess. Then write down their coordinates and keep them a secret! For maximum enjoyment, I’m going to go out on a limb and recommend modifying the rules a bit, though. I offer some “situation-specific” modifications below. How to modify the rules Our “let’s play again” game meter gets mixed results with Hues and Cues. Mom has been more on the side of “this is way to hard to come up with cues” whereas those at work are in the camp of “wish we could play it every day”. Sometimes a game comes along and you look at it and think: “How did someone not come up with this sooner?” Hues and Cues is one of those games. This difficulty in coming up with cues can make this game take longer than expected. Some players are going to take longer to come up with cues than others. Due to this, I think it would have been useful if each colour had a sample one word cue under them on the colour cards. Players would be free to use these cues if they want but they could also just work as inspiration when choosing clues.I consulted with a board-certified ophthalmologist during the design process. On top of that, I – and multiple publishers – tested the game with different players of all types of deficiencies. Because Hues and Cues isn’t about “what colour is an apple”… It’s about how one recalls or sees an apple, and how well it matches the other players’ perceptions of an apple, say. So players who see the colour spectrum differently will still see the hue in the same area of the board as you and I do. I mentioned before my experience in the printing industry. Part of any print shop is the need to colour match to a customer’s request… I’m reminded of that optical illusion with the dress: some saw it as white others saw it as blue. Okay! Let me ask you this: in your experience, what helps creativity? What lets people have interesting ideas? Or solve problems? In Hues and Cues, players are trying to guess a specific colour from a grid of 480 different colours based on one word and then two word clues. Once everyone has made their guess they get points for how close their guesses are to the target colour. Dead simple.