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Abstract: The article analyzes the functionality of language game codes in modeling the mental space of a fairy-tale narrative according to the laws of the detective genre. The author studies a series of books by Katya Matyushkina “All Adventures of da Vinci the Cat”. The article describes the operational mechanisms (constructive techniques) and linguistic markers of game transformations generated by the author, which determine the possibility of their decoding against the background of correlation with the prototype (phonetic similarity, structural and/or semantic “replica” of associates containing a game paradox). In other words, the associative relationship between the prototype and the gameme, discovered by the study, models the aspect of its perception, specified by the fiction author. The article highlights the allusive, imitative, and figurative-heuristic principles of language game, each of which sets its own vector in the plot of the detective story. The first principle involves decoding precedent phenomena (names, texts, situations), which creates a programmed effect of associative derivability of the meaning of a game transformation. The author reports a special role of the allusive principle in the creation of the game onomasticon, and specifically in deciphering the name of the main character. The second principle of language game focuses on the reader’s identification of recognizable features of the gameme and the prototype (on the principle of associative identification). Such is, in particular, the effect of parodic stylization of newspaper PR practices as a means of presenting unfolding events as a kind of reportage, and the use of onomatopoeic motivation for the names of the characters. The third (figurative-heuristic) principle of the language game encourages the addressee to co-create with the author, turning reading into a kind of quest that requires the child’s ability to independently decode gamemes according to the algorithms specified in the text. These features create the effect of an associative multidimensional text, presupposing different levels of understanding of the meanings of gamemes (taking into account the competence of primary school children for whom the book is written, and at the same time – taking into consideration the level of development of older children, and the interest the game can arouse in an adult reader).