On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, what was Phyllis's last name?

a) Lindstrom
b) Morgenstern
c) Nivens
d) Richards

• A1) Whist. The main difference between the games is the addition of bidding in bridge, a feature that has been added to some newer variations of whist.
• A2) 7,600. Losing every trick in a redoubled grand slam gives the opponents 400 points for the first trick and 600 for each of the other twelve. By contrast, making that same contract is worth only 2,980 points in no trump, 2,940 in a major, and 2,660 in a minor. Add 150 points to all of these for the absolute maximums with honors.
• A3) Canasta. The game uses two full decks with jokers, and all of the 2's and jokers are wild for a total of 12 wild cards.
• A4) Baccarat. The highest total in the game is 9.
• A5) The Four of spades and Four of diamonds (4S 4D). This gives you four-of-a-kind, topping the potential full houses, flushes, and straights out there.
• A6) Surrender. This option is sometimes available on all hands and sometimes only if your hand has a certain total. There are also early and late surrender variations against a dealer's ace. Fewer casinos now allow surrender, partly because the added complication confuses casual bettors more than it attracts them.
• A7) 108. There are four 25-card colored suits (one 0; two of the other denominations from 1 to 9; and two Reverses, Skips, and Draw Twos), four Wild cards, and four Wild Draw Four cards.
• A8) Concentration. Contestants attempted to find matches in a six-by-five game board, which revealed a hidden rebus as the numbers were removed. NBC broadcast the original show from 1958 to 1979, with Ed McMahon as the host for a few months in 1969.
• A9) Euchre. With hearts as the trump suit, this is the highest possible hand. The Jack of the trump suit, the right bower, is the highest card. The Jack of the same color, the left bower, is the second highest card. And the remaining cards in the trump suit follow from Ace down to Two.
• A10) Big Two and Dai Hin Min. As the name implies, Big Two places the Two above the Ace. The seemingly unrelated Dai Hin Min does the same, although both were developed in Asia.
• A11) 15. If one player has no cards to Spit after creating the layout, there is only one pile in the middle. The standard layout has piles of one, two, three, four, and five cards, for a total of fifteen cards.
• A12) 30. If four 7's and four 6's are played in order, the second player scores two pairs (4 points), two four-of-a-kinds (24 points), and two Gos (2 points). I.e., 7-7-7-7 Go 6-6-6-6 Go (the second set can be 5's or 4's instead).

What's your favorite card game that I haven't mentioned? Please post your thoughts in the comments.

I've always loved cards. They're small, universal, portable, and conveniently organized into a nice, neat four suits and a contrastingly untidy thirteen denominations. You can build houses with them, throw them (Chris "Jesus" Ferguson is amazing; check out this fruit slicing video), put them between the spokes of your bicycle (much better than destroying your baseball cards), and of course play games with them. I could fill your screen with an unadorned list of the card games I've played, but below I'll describe only the ones I've spent the most time with. All of the main games mentioned can be played with a single, standard deck of 52 playing cards.

• Children's Games: good games for the young ones
  • Concentration -- try to find matching pairs among face down cards; one of the few kids' games that most people get worse at as they get older.
  • Crazy 8s & Uno -- suit and denomination matching with some twists. Uno usually requires a special deck, but it can be played with a regular set of playing cards (e.g., 3 = reverse, 5 = skip, and you can figure out the others).
  • Go Fish -- simple memory and matching game; needs 3 or more players to be interesting.
  • I Doubt It -- get rid of your cards through strategy and bluffing; apologies for the main synonym under which this game is known.
  • Old Maid -- simple matching game whose name is no longer politically correct; a more random version of Go Fish.
  • War -- mindless but good for learning/reinforcing the order of the denominations.
• Speed Games: use an old deck for these!
  • Slapjack & Ratslap -- take turns flipping cards until a pair shows up, then try to slap first. The latter usually goes by the PG-13 name in the link.
  • Spit -- try to get rid of all of your cards by building up or down on two piles in the middle (2-player game only).
  • Spoons -- collect 4-of-a-kind while continually passing cards to your left; the speed isn't in passing the cards but in grabbing the spoons.
• Trick-Taking Games: usually best with four players
  • Bridge -- two 2-person teams, an auction with natural and conventional bids, and play with three hidden hands and a dummy. I finally learned to play the king of non-betting card games during my sophomore year spring break in college, and more recently it was my main card game for several years until the family expanded.
  • Euchre -- a trump game with two 2-person teams, a smaller deck, and fewer tricks.
  • Hearts -- pass three cards (or not), avoid the queen of spades (13 points) and the hearts (1 point each) or try to get them all (-26 points for "shooting the moon"). Team play is interesting as are variations making the ten of clubs (double your score) and jack of diamonds (-10 points) special. My parents call the queen of spades the "pig".
  • Pitch -- bid on how many tricks you'll win in the trump suit you specify in an auction (can be played with 2-person teams). In college, we played a simple variation of this called Trumps.
  • Spades -- bid on how many tricks you'll win with spades as the trump suit (can be played with 2-person teams). Notable rules include bidding to take no tricks (nil) and bidding blind (before looking at your cards).
• Betting Games: gamble for chips, money, or pride
  • Blackjack -- starting with two cards, try to beat the dealer by getting as close to 21 as possible without going over. Besides poker, it's the only casino game you can win in the long run (if you count cards and are willing to risk the ire of the management).
  • Draw Poker variations -- each player is dealt a given number of hidden cards and can exchange some of them for new ones. Five-card draw was once very popular (one of the two mainstays, along with seven-card stud, in our penny-ante games as kids).
  • Guts Poker variations -- all or nothing pot-sized bets on whether or not you've been dealt the best cards. We played with a "1, 2, 3, Drop!" count, and I'll admit, I had no guts.
  • Stud Poker variations -- each player is dealt some hidden cards and possibly some exposed cards; some variations also have community cards, with Texas Hold 'Em (2 hidden cards, no exposed cards, and 5 community cards) being the most popular game right now (and my current favorite). In fact, Hold 'Em is so popular that the recent Casino Royale movie replaced James Bond's favorite Baccarat with it.
• Other Games
  • Big Two -- get rid of your cards by beating what's on top of the pile. If everyone passes, the last person to play starts over with any card, pair, triplet, or quad, or 5-card poker hand. We played tons of Dai Hin Min, a Japanese variation (which we called Revolution), my freshman year in college.
  • Cribbage -- complex game involving adding to 15, straights, flushes, and more. Players race to score 121 points, usually tracked on a special peg board.
  • Gin Rummy -- organize the cards in your hand and, in some versions, play them onto the table in sets and suited sequences of 3 (or more). Some gin variants have a knocking rule, in which you only need to have the fewest points in your hand to win. Canasta is a complicated variation of Rummy. I grew up playing Rummy 500, a 7-card variation, but now my parents prefer Rummikub, played with plastic tiles, where groups on the table can be rearranged and wild cards add to the possibilities.
  • Solitaire -- countless ways to pass the time by yourself, usually involving building up or down in sequence or matching denominations.

The three games with special cards that I've played the most are:

• Mah Jong -- complicated version of Rummy. Usually played with tiles, but it's basically a card game, and you can get Mah Jong playing cards.
• Mille Bornes -- car race using a special deck including mileage cards, obstacles, and specials.
• Set -- find matching sets of three cards that have shared or exclusive shapes, counts, foreground colors, and background colors; great mental exercise. (Another mathematical game that uses cards is 24.)

Card Games Questions

• Q1) What card game was developed in the 18th century from a game called triumph and was a precursor to contract bridge?
• Q2) Ignoring points for honors, if both sides are vulnerable, what is the most points a team can win or lose in a single bridge hand?
• Q3) Which card game mentioned anywhere above uses the most wild cards?
• Q4) In which game mentioned above are face cards worth zero points.
• Q5) In Texas Hold 'Em, what two cards would be the nuts if the board shows the Eight of spades, the Nine, Seven, and Four of hearts, and the Four of clubs (8S 9H 7H 4H 4C)?
• Q6) What is the Blackjack term for conceding your hand in return for half of your bet back?
• Q7) How many cards are in an official Uno deck?
• Q8) Which card game was turned into a successful television game show that ran for over twenty years in the U.S.?
• Q9) In which game above can the following hand be very special: Ace of hearts, King of hearts, Queen of hearts, Jack of hearts, and Jack of diamonds (AH KH QH JH JD)?
• Q10) In which two games above is the Three the lowest denomination (give yourself a point if you can name either of them and a bonus point if you can name them both)?
• Q11) In the standard version of Spit, how many cards (or fewer) does a player need to have to win the game during the play?
• Q12) In a two-player cribbage game, what is the most points a player can score during the play of a single hand (not counting his heels or the show)?

Category Questions:

Literature & Arts	Who was the best-selling author of The Name of the Rose, which was turned into a 1986 movie starring Sean Connery?
Sports & Games	What is the official term for the pitcher in cricket?
Math & Science	What fast-growing vine, with which the Chinese make herbal medicine to treat alcohol abuse, lent its name to a comic strip?
Entertainment & Food	What 1985 movie, directed by Monty Python actor Terry Gilliam, is about a bureaucrat in a retro-future world?
Geography & Nature	What U.S. city was originally a silver mining town and is now known for its ski resorts and annual summer music festival?
History & Government	What company did Steve Jobs found shortly after he left Apple Computer?

Category Answers:

History & Government	FERGUSON	Sarah Ferguson; Fergie retained the title despite divorcing Prince Andrew in 1996.
Math & Science	TURING	British mathematician Alan Turing was inspired by the "Imitation Test" party game in which both a man and a woman attempt to convince a third person that they are the female.
Literature & Arts	CAPOTE	The "nonfiction novel" creator's original last name was Persons, but Truman Capote was adopted by his mother's second husband and took his name.
Sports & Games	FLUTIE	Boston College graduate Doug Flutie returned to the NFL after eight seasons in the Canadian Football League.
Geography & Nature	CRATER	Crater Lake in Oregon is about 1,950 feet deep.
Entertainment & Food	SQUID	The cephalopod's closest relatives are the octopus and the cuttlefish.

Quiz Quilt Answer: UNTIED (Fifth letters)

Something that's untied is not a knot.