The Dog's Meow (2001)

Overview

In The Dog's Meow – originally published as Anderland ("change country") – everything is different: Chocolate tastes like strawberry and barking dogs sound like cats. If one wants to look up, you have to look down, and everything red is suddenly blue! Cross-thinking and a quick mind are called for in the fantasy world of the different thinkers. Whoever adjusts most quickly to this "backward world" has the best chance of winning this thinking game.

In game terms, you lay out a central card that shows the words "up", "down", "left" and "right" in the appropriate places, then lay out one picture card on each side of that central card. You then flip over task cards one by one, and if a task card says "left" you look for the card on the right of the central card; if the task card asks for the name of what lies there, you instead give the sound it makes. The first person to do so wins the card, and whoever collects the most task cards wins the game.

An expert version adds color to the mix, with both a red and a blue central card, and four picture cards around each of those and player needing to look to red whenever the task card calls for blue.