Matching Game: Clouds
Flip two cards at a time and match each cloud to its name. Every card says whether it is a Cloud or a Name, and a pair is always one of each. The game counts a mistake when you miss a match on a card you have already seen.
How to tell them apart
Every picture is the same small sky, split into three levels above a strip of hills: high at the top, middle in the paler band and low just above the hills. Each cloud is drawn at the height where it forms, so look at where it sits as well as at its shape.
The names carry the same clue. Cirro- marks the high clouds and alto- the middle ones. Cumulus means a heap, stratus a spread-out layer and nimbus a rain cloud, so nimbostratus is a layer that brings rain and cumulonimbus is a heap that grows into a storm.
The pairs people mix up most differ in two ways. Cirrocumulus is high and made of tiny grains with no shading, while altocumulus sits lower and its patches are bigger, with shaded undersides. Cirrostratus is a high, thin veil that can put a ring of light round the sun, while altostratus is a lower, greyer sheet that turns the sun into a dim disc.
How to remember the clouds
Link something you see in the drawing to the sound of the name with a mental image. For cirrus, you might picture a circus clown with long, wispy white hair blowing high above the ring. The stranger the picture, the easier it is to recall. See how to create mnemonic images for more ways to build them.
To remember where each card is, give every position on the board a place in a memory palace, and walk back through the palace when you need to find a partner.
About the drawings
The skies are drawn for this site. Ten of the clouds are the ten main cloud types, or genera, of the World Meteorological Organization’s International Cloud Atlas. The rest are shapes and features from the same atlas, and a few special clouds, such as contrails, by the names most people use for them. A feature such as mamma or virga grows on one of the main clouds, so its card shows the feature and leaves out most of the cloud it grows on.
Try a bigger board
Every game deals a different set of clouds, so play again to meet new ones. Once you can clear a small board with only a few mistakes, move up a size.
Try another matching game or see all of our free memory games.
