Quintract, or 5-Suit Bridge: a rediscovered experiment
- Newt
- Nov 21
- 18 min read
Updated: Nov 25
"What will replace bridge" was a question that was constantly asked in the early 20th century, having evolved from Whist in Constantinople in the 1860s, and after being picked up along with cigarettes by the British in the Crimean war, arrived in the London clubs at the turn of the 19th century. * Answers included variously Reym (post here), Grand, Manx, Ba-ka-lee, Tout-a-tout, and Buccaneer to name only a few.
Various rules for scoring and bidding had come and gone in the interim. This was in part for a desire for novelty, but also because Bridge had been seen as becoming more formalised and purportedly less entertaining. Each of these new games was seen as perhaps providing an answer.
In the late 1930s, the answer seemed to be more of the same, with four different extra suits proposed: Leaves, Royals, Castles, and Eagles.
Here are our aces:
There was already a game patented in 1933 by Frederick Crompton, called "the American Fifth Suit" game, that had not found a manufacturer. This fifth suit had as a symbol the four French suits in miniature. We'll discuss that in another blog. Then there was the Yankee Notions cards had five new suits. Finally, we should mention the Liechtenstein pattern, which merges the Shields from the Swiss Pattern with the Coins, Cups, Clubs and Swords from the Spanish. These are all available from New Tradition Games.
Long before the regional patterns stabilised there was the
This wasn't the first time that a Whist-family game had been adapted to include a fifth suit: there was a Victorian English game called Zetema that also had 5 suits (played with a conventional pack, one suit doubled). and while it did not achieve the success hoped for it, the rules of the game adapt exceptionally well to these four 5-suit packs, and we will describe the game and its rules in another post.
For this post, however, we'll keep to the Leaves, Royals, Castles and Eagles.
Leaves
According to Walter Mallawan writing in 1938, Dr Walter Marseille of Vienna quite independently of Compton took the idea of the supplementary trumps in Tarock to add an extra suit, which he called "Grun" (Green), although that term was understood to mean Leaves.
The 5-suit game involved dealing 16 cards to each player, and having a talon or widow card left over. (This is pretty much the game envisaged by Compton, a nice example of the many doubles in the history of invention.)
In January of 1938 he unveiled it to the world, having tested it on the members of the successful Austrian international Bridge Team. Piatnik produced the suit, adding a matching silhouette leaf design to their existing French pattern. Here is Dr Marseille on the occasion, playing cards with his acquaintances.
In 6 months time he had left Vienna because of the situation in his home country, although it was couched as a visit to promote the game:
Dr. Walter H. W. Marseille, who says he invented the new five-suit bridge game, arrived yesterday from Vienna on the North German Lloyd liner Europa to promote the new system in this country.
He said that it gives to persons with the gambling instinct "an extra intrigue" in playing. The extra cards in the sixty-five-card deck give the players more opportunity to test their gambling in-stinct, he explained, and should cause fewer quarrels between married persons playing bridge. "There is no occasion for the close technicalities which often cause people to become angered with other players," he went on. Dr. Marseille said that he thought of the five-suit game only a year ago land: developed the plan over-night.
"It is mathematically much better for freak and uneven distribution and seems to be much more exciting than the conventional four-suit deck," he added. (NYT July 1938)
Shortly after this, Dr Marseille went to Chicago and set up a practice as a handwriting analyst. (This had been his profession in Vienna in 1934, when he first appears in the public record. He went on to be an expert witness in more than a few famous criminal trials there.)
There is no record of his being involved with the game subsequently. In its account of the game and its inventor, the Guardian of January 22, 1938 said
Dr. Marseille is not himself a bridge player—his games are chess and "go," the Chinese counter game, at which he is champion.
The best account of the rules as Marseille intended them is in a review by the Bridge champion Walter Malowan, which we include below.**
Here is our Leaves suit, based in part on the Piatnik series:
You can purchase a pack of Leaf 5-suit cards printed on demand at Make Playing Cards here.
Royals
What happens after this is partly clouded in intrigue. Soon after this, Waddingtons in England brought out a version of the game with green crowns, as a suit called Royals. There is a record of their display at a February 1938 London Exhibition:
Apparently there are some people who consider that bridge, in its present form, is not sufficiently difficult and as a result a new Five Suit bridge game has been devised. At the moment it is on show at the British Industries Fair, where its rules were explained to the King and Queen on their visit there last week. Though the Duke of Kent, who accompanied the King and Queen, remarked that "bridge is quite complicated enough as it is," the Queen purchased several packs of the new cards and since then many visitors to the British Industries Fair have followed her lead. The cards are now selling like the proverbial hot cakes and there is a staff at the fair to explain the principles of the game to would-be players.
............
On Feb. 21, Selfridge's in London placed five-suit decks on sale. On March 7, hundreds of them arrived in New York, went at once to meet advance orders.
It was Five-Suit Bridge with these green Royals that were launched in the US by Waddingtons as imports, and that Dr Marseille demonstrated. On the box there is credited to Paul Stern an additional set of rules for 5-suit Contract, which will become called Quintract in the US.
Here is the international American bridge team, the Four Aces, learning the game:
In the book that comes out on the game mid-year, by Samuel Fry and Edward Hymes, How to Win at Five Suit Bridge, the opening chapter is called "Here Come the Royals"
In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of March 13th, we can see an Advertisement place by Vandervoort's suggesting that people be the first in the city to play "Royals":
We're taking advance orders on this new set—filling the orders when the cards are cleared through customs. The supply will at first be limited. Put your order in now!
The fate of the pack seems to have been caught up in the merger and rivalries of the British card companies. Soon after, de La Rue brought out a version of the Royals in blue, in the form of the Crown Imperial. Around the same time, Waddingtons changed their outline crown shape to blue. We've based our suit on the Waddington's blue Royals
You can purchase a pack of Royals/Crown 5-suit cards printed on demand at Make Playing Cards here.
American Suits and Patent Fees
The US card companies wanted to serve the new 5-card market, but were reluctant to pay the royalty to the English manufacturers. They came up with two strategies for making a domestic product. Both involved finding older designs. Parker Brothers found a recent copyrighted invention from 1933, and bought the rights to it. USPCC found an older design and modernised it.
This ingenuity flooded the market with designs and halved the face price of the cards, and inadvertently removed them from the luxury status they had acquired. They stopped being sold through premium jewellers and department stores.
Castles
In Variety of March 9th 1938 we read:
Ammiel F. Decker, of Pelham. says the new five-suit bridge cards from London are a lift from his own idea, copyright in 1933, only he used castles instead of crowns for the fifth suit. Could not get game manufacturers to take up his idea.
Very shortly after, we read in Playthings of April 1938:
Parker Introduces Castle Bridge
Parker Brothers, Inc, have made another ten-strike. They have brought out "Castle Bride" which was invented by Ammiel F. Docker, of Pelham, New York, in 1933 and copyrighted by him in 1934 In consequence of this authenticated history, Parker Brothers now claim to offer the original five-suit bridge game . Mr. Decker had an artist draw designs in the Winter of 1933 for a new deck containing five suits incorporating the old standbys, spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs, and adding a new suit called "Castles." 1934, Mr. Decker registered his new deck with the rules for its use, with the Copyright Bureau of the United States. Meanwhile, the new game had been played frequently in his home and at the homes of friends in Westchester County, New York. It is stated that at many as twenty couples at one time had ventured into the intricacies of the five-suit game. Parker Brothers have secured exclusive rights to "Castle Bridge" and announce that they will soon make deliveries.
The effect on the marketplace was dramatic - Wanamaker's was placing advertisements in the New York Times ahead of the release, claiming to offer "the original" five-suit bridge.
We can tell this because the design shown is not the same as the final product:
Unlike the other 5th suit games, because Parker Brothers went the path of acquiring a game, Castle Bridge (Copyright 1938!) was in fact a new game of different (though similar) rules, including a Joker card. *** Their card design had pips that were a blue tower in silhouette (not in fact a castle!) Interestings New Yorker of that month had suggested a green castle was to be used, perhaps they went with a blue colour to differentiate from their rivals.
This is our Castle Suit, based on their design
You can purchase a pack of Castle 5-suit cards printed on demand at Make Playing Cards here. We have included Jokers so you can play Castle Bridge.
Eagles
The US Playing Cards Company used the precedent of the 5th suit from Yankee Notions, via the Union Patriotic Deck, mentioned above to make a 5th suit of Emerald green silhouetted Eagles, Copyright 1938, but suspiciously Hapsburg in appearance.****
In the New Yorker Talk of the Town for May 7th, 1938, we read this account of the context of the development of the 5th suit in the USA
The fifth suit, called “royals” in England, is protected by international copyright. When the new game was launched (a picture of the King and Queen of England buying a set did the trick) the American playing-card manufacturers discovered that the holders of the patent had set a stiff royalty on the use of the new symbol. The largest American manufacturers, the United States Playing Card Company, thereupon began looking around for an unpatented fifth suit. They found it in a book called “A History of Playing Cards and a Bibliography of Cards and Gaming.” Seems that during the Civil War a firm called the American Card Company, of New York, had put out a patriotic and distracting deck with a red-white-and-blue color scheme and four new suits—shields, stars, flags, and eagles. (The king, queen, and jack of eagles were, respectively, a colonel of Union infantry, the Goddess of Liberty, and a major of artillery, and you can imagine how fascinating an evening of poker must have been.) The United States Playing Card folk took over the eagle suit in its original color, blue, and a local young lady named Alice Callan was engaged to recast the design into a somewhat more modernistic form. All the other American manufacturers were then invited to make use of the new suit, without paying any royalty. They all accepted but one, who stuck to a green “castle” suit of his own devising. The eagle-suit faction now think they have an airtight defence against any possible infringement suits—the symbol is almost eighty years old and is in use by the majority of American companies. The American decks, now on the market, have practically done away with the sale of royals.
Alice Callan was in fact a native of Kansas Missouri, who had travelled to New York to become an in-house director at USPCC, having won several design competitions in her home town. She went on to become art director there.
Because of the design route, USPCC made a version of the English/Austrian game with adapted rules. They did however offer a new game, 5 suit poker ****, for which they included the rules.
Interestingly, by this point in time, Ely Culbertson had gone from giving interviews in January on why a fifth suit was a fad to writing articles for major fashion magazines like Vogue in July as to why it was "here to stay" and "unhesitatingly important.***** Culbertson called the game the "Green Monster"
Here are our Eagles, based on the USPC designs
You can purchase a pack of Eagle 5-suit cards printed on demand at Make Playing Cards here.
Crompton's Fifth American Suit
Before all these other games, a Mr Frederick Crompton patented his own version of a fifth suit, making it recursive in design. We will cover it in another post, but include it here for completeness.
The Fifth Business Pack
A nicety is that two of the extra suits were green, and two blue, and that led us to produce (in addition to the 5-suit packs/decks listed below) a Fifth Business pack (salve Robertson Davies), with the four suits, and the rules of play adapted from black and red to green and blue. Here is the deck in full
You can buy the Fifth Business pack printed on demand at Make Playing Cards here.
Octet Pack
It seemed only fitting to take this to a logical conclusion, and offer an eight-suit pack, with two each of red, black, blue, and green suits, and so we did. To round off the literary allusions, you can use the pack to play Terry Pratchett's discworld 8 suit game Cripple Mr. Onion.
Here is our glorious Octet Pack
You can buy an Octet pack, printed on demand, at Make Playing Cards here.
A summing up
So what happened to all these 5-suit packs and decks, their games, clubs, and competitions? It's hard to say: anyone who plays Quintract, or 5-suit Auction Bridge, or 5-suit poke, or one of the many games of Yankee Notions will be aware that there is an inherent enjoyability and playability here. Dismissing it as one more fad to sweep the world and leave as quickly underplays the respect it commanded by some remarkable card game authorities of the time. And indeed there have been half a dozen 5-suit packs/decks since, suggesting that the principle is worthy of play.
One article suggests that the domestic production in the US swamped the demand, and in the first few months the price per box went from 3$ to $1.50, which may have affected its image as the new must-have thing. On the other hand, the following year saw the outbreak of the second world War, and one is forced to consider that the 5-suit card pack, the problem it was solving and the nature of the solution, were too genteel for the times.
We'll talk about other 5-suit games, and indeed 6-suit bridge, in another post.
* INDIA'S NEW CARD GAME.
In a recent number of The Indian SportIng Times a writer who signs himself " Ace of Spades " condemns the new Calcutta card game, which, it has been said, would be all the rage at the London clubs next says the writer. "It is a pastime of mediocrity. The greatest of whist duffers may play bridge and escape condemnation.
He will not play it as well as a fine whist player, but the margin of difference is narrow by the condition of the game; lt practice tends to level cead playing skill down-ward. It can never compare with whist or piquet The strongest claim that its champions put forward for Its supremacy is that it is easy and sociable. The greater the skill of the whist player the less he desires the simplification of the game. It is in difficulty that he finds his opportunity. It is true enough that a bridge table is almost feminine in its loquacity and childish mirth, which, in the eyes of true card players, renders it a conspicuous nuisance. Evidently, " Ace of Spades " is to be heard, bridge will not flourish at the London whist clubs next season.
New York Times April 30, 1899
** Five-Suit Bridge by Walter Malowan
Cue, April 9, 1938
From Vienna, city of music and good card players, (a Viennese team won the World Bridge Championship last summer) comes the news of a new card game. While basically only a variation of contract bridge, "Five Suit Bridge" contains a feature which never before has appeared in the Whist family. This outstanding novelty is a fifth suit, called "Royals"
The idea may have come to the inventor, Dr. Marculin, from the ancient and still very popular Austrian game “Taroc" which, in addition to eight cards in each of the four standard suits, contains a fifth suit of twenty-two cards, which are always trumps.
In the new game, "Royals" are the highest suit below no-trump and count 30 points per trick; hearts and spades count 25, diamonds and clubs 20, no trump 40 per trick. 120 points form a game.
There has been no change in the value of the rubber, the penalties, or of small and grand slams. How-ever, the latter require fourteen and fifteen tricks, respectively, A super (shades of Hollywood!) slam of sixteen tricks has been added, count ing 1500 or 2000 points , depending on vulnerability . With thirteen cards in each suit , there are sixty - five cards in all , of which sixteen are dealt to each player . One card is left face up on the table and may be exchanged for one card in the dummy's or the declarer's hand .
Although a definite statement of all aspects of our new problem-child would be premature, our first impression is that expert players will have a greater advantage in this new game than in contract. The additional number of cards will make it more difficult for the average player to figure out the distribution in the opponents' hands. One of our expert players complains bitterly that she has been beaten "to the gun”. She was just ready to Iaunch "three suit bridge" because her partners have too much trouble with four suits.
According to reports received from the other side, the first addicts of five suit bridge believe that the distribution of the bands is more freakish. This must be only an optical illusion, since the bands containing five suits are bound to look strange at first. In addition to this, six or seven card suits are more likely to appear when sixteen cards are dealt instead of thirteen. Yet six spades among sixteen cards should be more common than five spades in an ordinary contract bridge hand. Actually, the inexorable law of averages, which has the deciding influence on distribution , will work more effectively with sixty - five cards than with fifty- two . The same players claim that more slam contracts are possible in five- suit bridge . This This statement is prob- ably true , but not because of the five suits . It would be a natural sequence were there are three kinds of slams. The super slam, however, will be as care is a peaceful session in cue city council. Small slams are apt to be more frequent than in regular contract, as they are helped considerably by the ability to eliminate an undesirable card in exchange for the "Kitty" card. As we play our bridge today, many slams are unbiddable because both the declarer and the dummy have two small cards in the same suit.
On the other hand, grand slams will require second-round control of five suits.
The new game will not require any radical change in our bidding systems, but only mathematical adjustments as to the roquirements for no trump bids, opening suit-bids, and informatory doubles.
Where the minimum requirement for an opening bid today is 2 honor tricks, because there are about 8% honor tricks in the deck, the five-suit bridges will need 3½ tricks in honor cards before starting the bidding.
If the new game should take bold here, it might easily lead to a resuscitation of the Official System, or the One-Two-Three System.
Many hands will be too strong for a one-bid and yet be short of a "forcing-to-game" two-bid. Therefore, an intermediary two-bid and a forcing three-bid would be a solution. No-trump bids will be more rare for the same reason as grand slams , i.e. there are too many suits to control . Five suit bridge will probably re- quire a reduction of about 20 % in the stake . The individual rubbers will be slightly larger because more hands will be played for partial scores , with subsequent sacrifice bidding to prevent the additional points for game. Also , more tricks are necessary for game and therefore one can be set more tricks with the resultingly larger penalties.
This will be partly counterbalanced by the fact that five suit bridge will require more rounds of bidding. which will slow up the game. Thus, less rubbers can be won or lost during a session. Those who believe in ace showing should have a wonderful time! And, Oh, happy thought— the Yarborough will become almost extinct!-So will the recurrent fairy tale of a bridge player holding a holding a perfect hand!
***
Here is an account of the rules in Judge of April 1938. Having the authenticity was key to the difeferentiationstrategy Parker Brothers was pursuing.
In 1933, the American game of Castle Bridge was invented by Ammiel F. Decker of New York. It is played with five suits of cards and a Joker. Before the deal, the Joker is turned face up on the table, and after the cards have been dealt in the usual manner the last card is placed beside it back up. The winner of the bid then takes both cards and in return discards two from his hand face down, which are placed under his first trick. Since it is the highest card in the pack, the Joker will take any trick. It is not of any suit, and a player does not have to be void of a suit to use it. When it is led, the highest card in each hand must be played on it, there being a penalty of 500 points for failing to do so.
****
A minor cultural reference is that long after the game disappeared from play, the 1952 gold age of science fiction book Jack of Eagles by James Blish preserved the memory, and is the reason why many people became interested in alternative card patterns. Unfortunately, the covers of the mass paperback (pictured), the hardback, and the English release all had the Eagles in red, which suggested the authors weren't drawing from life.
The hero in the story uses it as an analogy, and the response suggests why the market may have have failed through confusion of choices:
"When I was in high school," he said suddenly, "my folks got caught in a craze called five-suit bridge. It was all over the country for a while, though compared with canasta you'd never have noticed it. It had the usual hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades, and the fifth suit was called 'Eagles.""
"Crowns," the girl said. "I know the deck; I bought one once. I thought the fifth suit would come in handy for card tricks if I could think up some to use it in, but I never got around to it. It was called 'Crowns.'
"Maybe so. If it was called 'Crowns' I'll bet money you got your pack before the craze; probably the deck was thought up in Europe and when the craze started some superpatriot thought the game would sell better if it was changed to 'Eagles' Under any name it was a freak suit, and it didn't last. I thought myself it would have gone better in poker, not straight poker but the complicated kinds you wind up playing when there are women in the game." (Except this one, he thought. He could tell by one look that there was not a spit-in-the-ocean, one-eyed-jacks-and-deuces-wild, high-and-low-hand-split-the-pot cell in her body.)
"And you're it," she said.
"You bet I'm it," Danny said. "A low honor, a wild card in a freak suit. The jack of Eagles in person, all things to all men but nothing to himself."
"I still prefer Crowns," Marla said. "I'm glad you told me. I've even got a good moral reason for staying now, now that I see you're really in trouble, if I need it. I like long odds. When they pay off, they pay off like crazy."
*****
FIVE SUIT POKER FIVE SUITS - FIVE CARDS TO A HAND!
RANK OF HANDS
Five of a Kind
Straight Flushes
Four of a Kind
Flushes
Full Houses
Straights
Three of a Kind
Two Pair
One Pair
No Pair, less than above
The above schedule differs from the Four Suit Game in only one respect. namely. the Flash ranks before the Full House in the Five Suit Came.
******
And yet I am quite enthusiastie about Five-Suit Bridge. I have been hard at work all these months on the Culbertson System of Five-Suit Bridge, assisted by a large staff of master minds of Bridge and even a few professors deeply versed in the only science that is absolutely certain-the Theory of Probabilities.
I unhesitatingly recommend Five-Suit Bridge to all. If you have not played it, by all means try it. At first you will probably reject it as emphatically as I did, but if you keep on playing a little while longer, you will discover a peculiar fascination about this new game. As you continue to play, you will discover, as I did, that the fifth suit is really nuisance, getting constantly in your way. Nevertheless, the game begins to grow on you to such an extent you can hardly wait for another deal. The secret of this fascination is the "Kitty" or the
"Widow" card, that sixty-fifth card, dealt, as it used to be by all self-respecting cheats, from the bottom of a deck and laid face up for the most reckless or, if you prefer, the cleverest bidder to grab. It won't be long before that Widow will get under your skin.
The tricks it plays on you, the way it has of turning a whole deck of perfectly balanced distributions into crazy freaks, where Aces and Kings are guillotined and voids are a common occurrence, must definitely exasperate and therefore interest you. It's because of this Widow, whose passionate distributional outbursts almost verge on obscenity, that Five-Suit Bridge acquires a kind of morbid attrac-tiveness, until the player is willing to tolerate the puerilities of the fifth suit and the absurdities of the present crippling scoring.
The Widow principle made Skat the national game of Germany for generations and it similarly maintained the supremacy of Vint, the ancestor of contract, for over one hundred years in Russia. Let me show you how this devastating Widow operates in practice and in case you have not yet played Five-Suit Bridge, here is a very briet outline of the game.
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