I bought Calico because it promised me a quilt and napping cats, and I am a woman who keeps a cat on her lap during nearly every game she plays, so this felt like destiny. What I actually got was a fiendish little combinatorial puzzle that has, on more than one evening, made me put my head down on the table in defeat. That gap between its sweet looks and its prickly brain is exactly its charm, and I adore it for the betrayal.

You are filling your personal quilt board with patch tiles, each of which has both a color and a pattern. The scoring pulls you in several directions at once. You score for sewing together clusters of matching colors, you complete buttons by grouping colors a certain way, and you lure cats onto your quilt by creating the specific patterns each cat prefers. The cruel part is that every tile has to serve two masters, its color and its pattern, so the placement that perfects your color groups often ruins the patterns the cats want, and the other way around.

The joy is that tight, satisfying agony of placement. You only have a few tiles to choose from each turn, and finding the one spot that threads color, pattern, and a hard to reach goal tile is genuinely delicious. It is a quiet, solitaire feeling puzzle with just enough competition for the shared tiles.

It teaches quickly, looks gorgeous on the table, and packs a serious brain squeeze into a charming package. For players who like a cute exterior wrapped around a real puzzle, Calico is a delight, though be warned it is far trickier than it looks.

Are you a chase the cats player or a perfect your color groups player? Tell me below, and tell me which finicky cat you love to lure.

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