About the Coffee Shop Spot the Difference Game
The hiss of the steam wand, a window seat and ten spare minutes — the coffee shop deck is made for exactly that moment. The perfect companion to your morning flat white.
What's on the Coffee Shop boards
The pictures the two boards are built from — 12 in all: ☕ Espresso🫖 Teapot🥐 Croissant🧁 Muffin🍪 Cookie🥛 Steamed Milk🍰 Cake Slice📰 Newspaper💻 Laptop🪴 House Plant🎶 Café Playlist🛋️ Comfy Chair
Study tip: scan the left board in the same order every time — top-left to bottom-right — and check its twin against that order. The difference between espresso and teapot is easy to spot; a missing croissant in the wrong corner is not, unless your scan is systematic.
How to memorise a food and drink board
Cook the board into a menu. Starter, main, dessert, drink — assign every item a course and walk the meal in order. Food decks memorise like recipes because recipes are already ordered lists with logic to them; a random-looking grid becomes a set menu after one pass.
Use flavour and temperature as handles too. Hot against cold, sweet against sour, breakfast against midnight snack — oppositions are memorable, and most food decks are quietly full of them. When the pancake goes missing, "breakfast foods, left side" is a small question.
How to Play
- Press Start. Two boards appear, looking identical.
- Compare them tile by tile — one has been swapped for something different.
- Tap the changed tile, on either board, before the timer runs out.
- Each round adds more tiles and less time. Three misses ends the run.
Fun Facts About Coffee Shop
- Legend says coffee was discovered by an Ethiopian goat herder whose goats danced after eating the berries.
- "Espresso" means "pressed out" in Italian.
- The cappuccino is named after the brown robes of Capuchin monks.
- London's 17th-century coffee houses were nicknamed "penny universities" — a penny bought entry and great conversation.
Food & Drink deck questions
A good theme for playing with children in the kitchen?
Yes — name each item, decide who would eat it, argue about dessert. Food vocabulary is everyday vocabulary, so the deck doubles as a language game for small children and English learners.
Any trick for the drinks versus foods mix-ups?
Group them first thing: everything you pour on one side, everything you slice on the other. Food decks punish players who scan randomly more than any other theme.