Eva and I played The Fox In The Forest the other day

[conuly]

It's a trick-taking game for two players, using a specialized three suit, 33 card deck. Very nice artwork on the cards.

She'd never played any trick-taking games before, and therefore I won handily. I didn't quite trounce her, but it wasn't too hard to win. And when she asked how I could've won so easily I explained that as an adolescent I played a LOT of Hearts on the computer, and so I was already familiar with some of the basic strategies.

The next day she played with her mother, who had NOT played Hearts on the computer at all. She played Minesweeper, a game I've never been good at. And Jenn won handily! As she explained, although she wasn't familiar with Hearts, she had played an awful lot of Couillon when visiting Belgium. If Eva tries again she ought to play with Ana, but it wouldn't surprise me to hear that Ana secretly is a Bridge champion or something at the rate this is going!

Now, I never could get into Couillon for various reasons, and it was hard for me to track down the rules on the internet. I know why, too. When I was introduced to the game at the age of six or so, I was told it's called Couillon because you cut, couper, the deck. (They didn't have to give me any explanation, really, but they did.) Turns out...um... that is... not the etymology at all. So here I was trying to work out the spelling using coup as the base, and no.

Comments

[deird1]

Ooh, new card game! *reads rules*

Now, I never could get into Couillon for various reasons, and it was hard for me to track down the rules on the internet.

I had the same problem with the game dirac - which, it turns out, is correctly spelled as durak.

[conuly]

In that case we can chalk this up to weird transliteration, I guess.

[hudebnik]

I remember my ten-year-old nephew being convinced that he was the smartest person in every room, until he found that my stepfather, my mother, and I could all do crossword puzzles that he couldn't. Hmm... maybe there's something to this "old age and treachery" thing after all.

[conuly]

HAH! Well, Eva had no such illusions, but I think she'd wanted a better shot at winning. She's actually no slouch at the game, and played quite well against two different people who have years more experience with this style of gameplay than she does.

[flamingsword]

I always thought I was terrible at cards because three people in my family could count cards. I thought that was normal until I hit college, and by then I had lost interest in most games with other people. Our families warp our internal worlds.

[conuly]

Don't most people count cards at least a little!?

[flamingsword]

No. Your numeracy might be up there with my mother who can, the small gods bless her, read a math textbook and do the problem sets entirely in her head. Including quadratics. Do you know how frustrating it is to try to learn something from someone who doesn't understand how to be bad at it? That your brain does not just Do The Thing?

It's awful, and it's probably why I still dont play cards.