That´s Not a Hat!

That’s Not a Hat! is a memory game designed to cause conniptions and consternation. Everything seems simple at the beginning: everyone gets a single card in front of them with a picture on it of something easily-identified: a chair, a yoyo, a hat. The starting player flips their card face-down and passes it to their neighbour (the back of the card tells you which way to pass it) and announce aloud what the picture is.

Whomever received the card now does the same with their own card, and so the game proceeds with cards being passed around and announced, and very soon all the cards are hidden and everyone is trying to keep in mind not just what the card they have in front of them is, but whether the card they’ve been passed is actually what the passer tells you it is. It’s surprisingly easy to lose track, especially in bigger groups, and the mild panic or faux confidence it induces around the table is what the game is going for.

If anyone doubts they’ve really been passed what they’re being told it is, they can challenge the veracity of it, and the card is revealed. Whoever loses the challenge keeps the card as a penalty and draws a new one from the deck – first to three penalty cards loses!