conuly

This idea is the result of two things hanging around in my head.

First, the difficulty of playing a good game of Rummy 500 with five people. You can add a second deck of cards in, but then that changes the game a bit. I mean, you can have a run of 4 2s and then do 4 straights using those 2s. Who wants that? Not me.

Second, the fact that although there are a number of games you can play with a deck of cards to help solidify the times tables to 10, there are very few you can play that work up to 12, unless you want to constantly be reminding the kids whether Jack or Queen is 11.

It occurs to me that I could solve both these problems in one fell swoop with a custom deck. I could have number cards up to 12, perhaps add another face card (because 16 is a square number, that's why), and - because why not? - add another two suits and - voila! A custom deck of 96 cards, just slightly less than if I'd shuffled two decks together. (If I add yet another face card I get even closer to the total of two shuffled together, but then I've got 17 cards a suit and... blech.)

Now, this is all hypothetical, because the odds of me getting my shit together enough to do anything remotely resembling this are pretty darn slim, but since I'm thinking anyway, would it be better to do these two additional suits one red and one black? Or in a different color entirely, like blue?