Market Haggle

At a market stall, a shopper describes an item by its attributes, colour, size and category, in the foreign language. Read the clues, work out which single item on the stall satisfies all of them, and pick it. The clue set always points to exactly one answer, so it is pure deduction once you parse the words.

• Read the shopper's attribute clues
• Eliminate items that fail any clue
• Tap the one item that matches every detail
• Use translation or hints if a word stumps you

• Desktop: click an item to choose it; use the translate, hint and next buttons
• Phone & tablet: tap the items and buttons, fully touch-driven

• Daily: the same shoppers for everyone each day
• Practice: fresh requests every run
• Difficulty adds more items and trickier clue combinations

• Treat each clue as a filter and rule items out one attribute at a time
• Learn colour and size words first, they do most of the eliminating
• When two items look close, the category word usually breaks the tie

Market Haggle blends descriptive vocabulary with logical elimination, so words are learned through reasoning.

• Skills: descriptive vocabulary, logical deduction, foreign language
• Best for: intermediate learners (teens and up)
• For parents & teachers: descriptive vocabulary plus reasoning.

Working out which item a shopper means from attributes given in the target language is communicative language teaching: using the language to accomplish something rather than to display it.

Making comprehension the puzzle is the original design.

You cannot answer by recognising one word, because several items share each attribute and only the combination identifies one. That forces real parsing of a sentence, which is what communicative approaches are trying to provoke.

Market Haggle is an original, free browser game that blends descriptive vocabulary with logical elimination. It is built in-house and runs instantly in your browser.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.