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Goal

Win tricks against a grid of cards. Every trick you win is 1 point for you, and every trick you lose is 1 point for the grid. Reach your target before the grid reaches its own. The difficulty sets both targets:

• Easy: you need 21, the grid needs 21.
• Normal: you need 26, the grid needs 16.
• Hard: you need 31, the grid needs 11.

A short game has lower targets. See Variants.

Cards

One standard 52-card deck, without Jokers.

Ranking

Aces are high: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K, A. A trump beats any card that’s not a trump.

Setup

1. Deal the grid. Shuffle and deal 36 cards face down in a 6×6 grid, 1 card to each place.

2. The diagonal. Turn face up the 6 cards on the diagonal from the bottom left corner to the top right corner.

3. The deck. The rest of the deck stays face down beside the grid.

Play

1. Deal yourself 7 cards and set one aside face up as the trump card. Its suit is trumps for the round. You play the other 6.
2. Play a card and challenge a line. A line is a row or a column, and you can challenge it only while all 6 of its cards are there. Choose which end to start from.
3. Turn the line’s cards face up one at a time from that end, and stop at the first card of your suit. The grid plays that card, and the higher card wins the trick.
4. No card of your suit? The grid plays the lowest trump in the line, and the trump wins.
5. Neither your suit nor a trump? You win the trick, and you choose which of the line’s 6 cards the grid plays.
6. The grid’s card leaves the grid. The gap it leaves means neither the line you challenged nor the line crossing it there can be challenged again this round. Every card you turned stays face up.
7. Play all 6 cards, one trick each, then score.
8. Between rounds, put the tricks and the trump card back in the deck, along with every card of any line that has no face-down card left. Shuffle, fill every gap in the grid face down, and deal 7 cards. Face-up cards still in the grid stay face up.

Scoring

Each trick is 1 point for whoever won it. After a round, if the grid has reached its target, you lose, even if you reached yours too. Otherwise, if you have reached yours, you win. A game lasts at most 7 rounds, or 4 in a short game.

Examples

• A challenge from the right You play the J♠ into row 3 from the right. Its cards turn face up one at a time from the right end: the 9♣, then the Q♦, and neither is a spade. The third card from that end is the 5♠, already face up, so the grid plays it. Your J♠ is higher, so you win the trick. The 5♠ leaves the grid, and its gap means row 3 and column 4 can’t be challenged again this round. From the left, 3 face-down cards come before the 5♠, and any of them could be a higher spade.

Variants

Short game. It lasts at most 4 rounds, and both targets are lower:

• Easy: you need 12, the grid needs 12.
• Normal: you need 14, the grid needs 10.
• Hard: you need 18, the grid needs 6.

Playing with your own deck

Keep score on paper, or with a counter for you and one for the grid.

How this version differs

• The 10s are in the deck. The printed rules take the four 10s and both Jokers out and use them to count points. A counter keeps score here, so all 52 cards play.
• There are three difficulties. Easy is the printed Normal and Hard is the printed Hard. Normal comes from the designer’s later Screentop edition.
• There’s a short game. Neither rule set has one. Its targets were chosen so the bots win about as often as at the same difficulty in a full game.
• The game stops as soon as the result is settled. Once the grid has its points, or you have yours and the grid can’t catch up this round, the rest of the round isn’t played.