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10:25am on Saturday, 21st October, 2023:

Bobs-y'r-Uncle

Weird

The cache of cards I bought the other week came with some packs that aren't regular playing cards. This often happens when you buy job lots — Happy Families and Snap decks are common (even though you can play both with a regular pack). This latest batch has a Snap set, for example.

It also has a game called Bobs-y'r-Uncle, dating from 24th April 1935 (the date it was coprighted is given precisely). It's the kind of game that children wouldn't be begging to play twice in a row. There are eight nursery rhymes featured, each split into six cards with their nursery rhyme's lines on them. On your turn, you can play the first card of a nursery rhyme or the next line of a nursery rhyme that's already been started. If you can't play, you have to take a card from the unplayed cards that are in a draw deck. Once that has been emptied, you either play a card or you don't, but in either case you end your turn by saying "Bobs-y'r-Uncle" to the player whose turn it is next. They have to choose a card at random from your hand and add it to theirs. The game ends when a player has no cards left. That player is the winner.

So far, so innocuous.

There are six additional cards, in two sets of three. If you get all three of one set in your hand, that also counts as a win. This means that if you have twenty cards and everyone else has only a few, you can still hold out hope that you might complete a set and win.

One of the sets is made up of the Uncle cards — Uncle Bob, Uncle George and Uncle Joe.

As for the other set, hmm, well rather than scan one, maybe I'll just scan the rules so you can read what they are.



Those are innocently mixed in with nursery rhymes.

That's 24th April 1935 for you.




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