Hmm... The Mysterious Circumstances Cards (PDF)
$4.50
👉 PLEASE view the DETAILS section below the description to ensure you know what to expect with your order.
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How these cards work
These 88 cards provide little mysteries that could appear in a story – it's up to kids/teens (adults too!) to think like a storyteller and come up with potential explanations for each scenario. Sample cards are below.
In addition to critical and creative thinking, these cards will exercise lateral thinking, logic and reasoning skills.
Age range: We'd say around 9/10-ish and up.
Created: 2025
There are two ways to use the cards:
For the open-ended option: use only the top portion of the card. We describe a mysterious circumstance and participants imagine possible explanations.
For the Q&A option: someone reads the mystery and players, using their detective skills, ask yes or no questions to determine the answer, which is on the bottom half of the card. Some answers are detailed and/or difficult, so the reader has to exercise judgment as to what they will accept. (And some answers veer into sci-fi/fantasy, so flexible thinking is required!)
FYI: In the intro to this PDF, we offer a few tips for participants, including for the person reading the mystery on how to handle their role.
Samples





Extend the activity
Ideas and explanations can be transformed into something concrete. Kids/teens can use their writing or artistic skills to create drawings, short stories, comic strips, plays, videos/short films or a trailer for a short film.
Think Like A Storyteller series
Our Hmm... The Mysterious Circumstances Cards are part of our new Think Like A Storyteller series. It's a multi-faceted series that seeks to build imagination, critical thinking, strategic thinking, problem-solving, lateral thinking and idea generation through different aspects of storytelling.
Details!!
What to know about our PDFs:
- When you order this PDF, the download link will appear on your checkout page and you'll receive it via email. That link is active for 2 weeks. If you miss the window just email us at hello@furiousthink.com!
- Our PDFs are not editable. You can print as well as copy & paste the content, but you cannot alter the PDF you receive. Please know, some online printing services are incompatible with this set-up (we've only encountered one, but assume there may be others).
- With this PDF you get two versions: a version created with one card/slide per page that is easily viewed on a device AND a version with four cards per page, that you can print and cut into physical cards.
- Our PDFs are non-refundable.
Printing: The printable pages are created for standard letter size, 8.5" x 11".
Size of file: single cards package - 94 pages, 490 KB | printable package - 26 pages, 400 KB
If you would like more information about buying PDFs from us, please visit our purchasing PDFs details page.
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