We have posted elsewhere about a quite remarkable Americana game, Bishops Whist, invented by Alphaeus T Dana in the 1890s. His book on the game began with an essay that filled half the pages, so we have decided to include it in its entirety hereunder: Dana's Essay (Mostly Historical) Wherein We Discern an Historical Apology for the Rankings in Bishops Whist In Charlemagnes day, a period in history wherein we behold the feudal system in the zenith of its strength, the gulf whi

Bishops Whist is a lost piece of Americana that reconsidered the nature of court cards and rationalised them. This is our Bishops Whist deck: The Bishops Whist cards The invention of one Alpheus T. Dana, it removed Ace,10, Jack, and added Knight, Bishop and Castle. With the King and Queen, it is the complement of the ranking chess pieces. A particularly novel aspect of the deck is that the knight cards are "pipless", that is, they don't belong to a suit. There are no survivin

This is our version of the splendid design for Frederick Crompton's American Fifth Suit: Invented in 1933, but not realised until the height of the 5-suit bridge craze in 1938, Dictators* was a game that combined elements of Auction Whist (auctioning, nominated trumps, contracts), Tarock (permanent trumps in the form of Atout cards), and Skat (the Widow Card). He seems (from the documentation) to have called his fifth suit Dictators. The rules are similar to the later 5-suit

We've discussed our recreation of the extraordinary Yankee Notions deck, probably devised by the chess and whist authority Thomas Frere. In this post we will introduce the games, and provide the originals, as well as a downloadable modernisation. Here is the complete set of 50 cards, to remind you If you want to buy a copy printed on demand at Make Playing Cards, you can do so here. The Deck 50 cards total, divided into two classes: Faces (Upper Ten) — caricature figures serv

We have previously posted about Quintract Bridge (with five suits) and the Liechtenstein Pattern (also with five suits). Now it is the turn of Yankee Notions, an American original. Four new suits—Stars, Eagles, Flags and Crests—providing an American Nativist aura to the set, with a Faces suit fulfilling trump duties (perhaps inspired by the Tarock decks). There were no court cards: there was a Zero, or Z card at the apex of each suit. 16 new or adapted games were described

From the patents, an elegant minimalist set of French pattern playing cards: Arrange by rank, to show the styles In April of 1939, John Caldwell Hampshire (a subject of the King of Great Britain, residing in New York) was granted a patent for a New, Original, and Ornamental design for a Deck of Playing Cards. They are an elegant design, with only the symbol in the centre of the card, and the rank marked by the index. Additionally, the Ace, Jack, Queen, and King had bars in th

On November 23, 1902, the Los Angeles Times published a detailed description of a new card game that had been "introduced into Pasadena"...

On the 3rd of December, 1904, The Indianapolis News published a brief notice about a new card game called "Euclid," invented by E. J....

In the spring of 1911, a new card game called "Tootatoo" (or "Tout Atout" in its more elegant French form, meaning "All Trumps") burst...

On the 22nd of November, 1928, the New York Leader reported on a new card game called "Card Roulette" that had been introduced by...

Kopa is a courtless* card game of 60 cards, in 4 suits, numbered 1 to 15. The four suits are named for mediaeval heraldic tinctures:...

On the 24th of January, 1928, Ototaro N. Yamamoto of San Gabriel CA, a flower raiser by profession, patented a new version of Hanafuda,...