Description

This is a children's game based on the classic three-shell game. One player takes the role of Scoop, an ice cream vendor promoting "his surprise ice creams." Four wooden ice cream cups are used to hide stacks of three wooden counters each. Each wooden counter represents a scoop of ice cream in a particular flavor--vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, or mint--with all of the scoops of a particular flavor being hidden under a single ice cream cup. The cups are then switched around--from 4 to 8 switches per round depending on what the players agree on beforehand--and the first player to Scoop's left tries to guess which cup a particular flavor (it's a little unclear from the rules, but apparently Scoop selects the flavor to be guessed) is under. If they're correct, they get one of the "scoops" of that flavor, and they become Scoop (i.e. they get to switch the cups around) for the next round. If they're incorrect, they lose one of their "scoops" from a previous round (if available) and the player to their left gets to guess. Players have the option of passing if they don't want to risk losing a "scoop." At the end of the round (after either a player has guessed correctly or all players have passed or guessed incorrectly). All of the cups are lifted and any lost "scoops" are returned to their respective stacks. The game continues until all of the "scoops" have been won. Cups with no "scoops" under them remain in the game. The player with the most "scoops" (wooden tokens) is the winner. The game comes with attractive wooden components, and ice cream vendor's hat to designate Scoop, and a sturdy box that's really quite a bit larger than necessary to hold everything.