Set

Set is a game played with a special 81 card deck (3^4th). Each card has symbols on it, with four features in three denominations each: number (1, 2, 3), color (red, green, purple), shading (solid, striped, hollow), and shape (oval, diamond, squiggle). Cards are dealt out 12 at a time, and the goal is to be the first person to find a "set" in the 12 cards. Sets are made up of three cards for which, on each feature, the cards are either all the same or all different.

For more details on gameplay, see the Set website.

Set is a fun intellectual game, but is difficult at first, even for talented youth, because it requires very specific pattern recognition skills, rather than just academic smarts. It's a lot of fun once you get some practice, however, and quickly becomes vaguely addictive.

Study of Exceptional Talent

SET is also the acronym for a longitudinal research project at CTY. To qualify for SET, students must score 700+ on SAT Math or Verbal before age 13. SET members are asked to fill out questionnaires. They get Imagine magazine and a SET newsletter.

They tend to be pretty good at Set (the game).