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