Game Reviews

Wooden Shoe Reviews: Simply Clever Cards Arithmetic

SimplyClever.Cards Arithmetic

What two words bring groans and sighs to groups of children everywhere when they are combined?  No I don’t mean vegetables and dinner I mean Learning and Fun.   While there have been many attempts at disguising learning as a fun game activity many such games fail to find the needed balance and just try too hard.  With Simply Clever Cards Arithmetic they seem to have found the right balance of fun and learning that hit off quite well with our reviewers.  The cards take a normal deck of playing cards and replace the card values with numbers 0-12 and the suits with colors (red, yellow, green, and purple/blue).

The top of each card has a numerical value and the bottom of the card has a set of numbers that can be used in many ways if you are practicing multiplication or division.  The cards come with a booklet of game ideas to use the cards to play ‘math’ versions of existing card games and have some other games just for them.  When playing your favorite card game they allow you to add in an extra twist on the game by doing a math problem along with it.  While this may not be for everyone we have played quite a few different games with them and found them to be both challenging and enjoyable.

The decks themselves are the same size as a standard deck of playing cards and as such can be stored just about anywhere when traveling or at home.  While this game will probably not appeal to adults it has seen quite a bit of play and helped our children hone their math skills over the summer.

Wynken’s Thoughts:


At first I didn’t like the idea of doing the math in order to play the games but after a little bit it was a lot of fun.  I like that you can play card games you already know with the cards and add in the math problems on top of that.  This was a lot of fun and I want to play it at school this year.
7/10 Stars

Blynken’s Thoughts:


I love math and the games were a lot of fun.  I liked that you could use the cards as regular cards if you didn’t want to do the math problems for a game.  This was a lot more fun than I had expected.  Would definitely play it again.

7.5/10 Stars

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