Game card assembly

Claim 1

A game card assembly for use in connection with a game such as tic-tac-toe, said assembly comprising a laminated game board including a bottom backing sheet, a top sheet, and an intermediate guide sheet, adjacent sheets being adhesively secured together in face-to-face relationship in order to provide a three-ply laminated game board, said top sheet being formed with a plurality of elongated window openings which are quadrilaterally arranged substantially in checkerboard fashion so as to provide windows which are disposed in vertical, horizontal and diagonal rows, each window opening being in the form of a horizontally elongated hexagonal opening having parallel horizontally extending edges, together with V-shaped notch-like recesses at the opposite ends of the opening, each window opening, exclusive of said recesses, defining a square medial display area, said intermediate guide sheet being formed with a plurality of elongated guide slots, there being one slot in register with each window opening, the longitudinal and transverse extent of each slot being greater than the longitudinal and transverse extent of its respective window opening so that the peripheral regions of the slot are overlapped by the edge regions of the window opening, and a pair of substantially flat differently colored rectangular shutters slidably disposed in each slot and normally assuming spaced apart retracted positions wherein the major end portions thereof project beneath the top sheet and so that the medial display area of the backing sheet is visually exposed through the window opening between the spaced apart shutters, each shutter being individually movable to an advanced position wherein an opposed edge of such shutter meets the adjacent opposed edge of the other retracted shutter with a major portion of the moved shutter extending across and covering and thus concealing the display area of the associated window opening and rendering a visible color indication of its presence in such advanced position, and a finger catch in the form of a small protuberance projecting upwardly from the top surface of each shutter in the vicinity of its meeting edge, the ends of said guide slots in the intermediate guide sheet constituting limit stops for the adjacent ends of the shutters so that when the shutters are in their retracted positions the finger catches thereon are maintained free from the edges of the notch-like recesses at the ends of the window openings, thus inhibiting wear between the protuberances and such recesses and affording fingernail access to the protuberances during continued use of the game card assembly, said quadrilaterally arranged window openings being thirty-four in number and the checkerboard arrangement thereof involving seven vertical rows of window openings embodying containments of two, five, six, eight, six, five and two in the various vertical rows reading horizontally in either direction, and eight horizontal rows of window openings embodying containments of one, four, five, seven, four, five and one in the various horizontal rows, reading vertically in either direction.