Santa Shadow Match

Santa Shadow Match is not a matching board at all in the usual sense — it is a shape-recognition game for children. A figure appears on the right, several shadows are offered, and you click the silhouette that figure would cast.

The scoring makes it a real exercise rather than a click-anything toy. A correct shadow awards five hundred points; a wrong one deducts a hundred. That gap is deliberately wide enough to reward looking properly, and small enough that a mistake does not wipe out the progress a child has made, which is the balance an educational game needs.

It suits younger players especially well because the skill it trains — matching an outline to a solid form — is genuinely useful and rarely practised elsewhere in a games catalogue.

1. Look at the figure shown on the right of the screen.
2. Compare the shadows offered and find the one that figure would cast.
3. Click the correct shadow to earn five hundred points.
4. Take your time — a wrong click costs a hundred.

Check the outline at the edges rather than the middle. Two shadows often share a body shape and differ only in a hat brim or an outstretched arm, and that is where the answer usually is.