The Rules of the (Card) Game Trivia Quiz

Answer: Uno

The penalty if another player catches you failing to follow this rule is an immediate draw four, putting you rather further from the goal of getting rid of all your cards.

Uno was invented in 1971 by Merle Robbins, but games similar to it, such as Crazy Eights, go much further back.

Answer: Mille Bornes

As the word "almost" suggests here, there are exceptions. The next few lines describe them, including that "no more than two 200 mile cards may be used" and that you cannot go above 1,000 miles.

The goal of the game also is the source of the game's name: "mille bornes" is French for "1,000 milestones".

Answer: Rook

Unlike most card games, Rook allows this particular trump to be played on any trick, even if you would otherwise be able to follow suit.

The somewhat non-standard deck used in a game of Rook (cards numbered 1-14 instead of two through ace) was in part for marketing reasons -- by steering clear of the imagery of standard playing cards, Parker Brothers hoped to make the game more acceptable to those who would otherwise avoid card games for religious reasons.

Answer: Pit

To "corner the market" on a commodity here means to collect all nine cards of that commodity, which you accomplish by trading cards with other players at a frantic rate.

The commodities listed in the question are the seven from the original version of the game in 1904. Some modern editions replace Flax, Hay, and Rye by commodities such as Coffee, Oranges, and Sugar that are more commonly traded on today's markets.

Answer: Set

A standard deck for Set consists of 81 cards, of which no fewer than 1080 different trios form sets. The difficulty is in developing your pattern recognition skills enough to quickly recognize whether any of those sets is hiding in the 12 cards in front of you.

The inventor of Set, Marsha Falco, was a genetic researcher studying epilepsy in dogs when she first started developing the game in the 1970s. She used file cards to keep track of various traits in the dogs, and the process of looking for patterns in the symbols she used for those traits eventually grew into the gameplay of Set.

Answer: Magic: The Gathering

Richard Garfield, the inventor of Magic, was at the same time working on a doctorate in mathematics. His Thesis, "On the Residue Classes of Combinatorial Families of Numbers", appeared in 1993, the same year the first Magic cards were printed.

The game has since grown by leaps and bounds: As of 2017 there have been more than 16,000 distinct Magic cards printed, and the comprehensive rules now run more than 116,000 words (with the rule in the question here appearing near the very beginning).

Answer: Bridge

(Rules quote taken from the American Contract Bridge League's "Laws of Duplicate Bridge")

Contract bridge, the variant most commonly played today, evolved from auction bridge, which in turn evolved from older trick-taking games such as whist. Noted players of the game have included Dwight Eisenhower, who played both while he was in the Army and the White House, and Omar Sharif, who once said, "Acting is my business. Bridge is my passion."

Answer: Euchre

(Rules quote taken from Hoyle).

The word "Bower" here comes from the German word "Bauer" meaning "farmer" (an alternative name for the Jack in German). The word "Euchre" itself has roots in "Jucker", another alternative name for the Jack in German. Euchre is played with a smaller deck than many other trick-taking games (24 cards instead of the 52 you'd see in Bridge, Hearts, or Spades), and players start with a hand of only 5 cards.

Answer: Cribbage

(Rules quote taken from Hoyle).

Noddy, the earliest forerunner of Cribbage, is more than 400 years old! By the mid-17th century, the game we think of today as Cribbage had already been nearly finalized, with the main difference to modern rules being that players then started with a five card hand instead of a six card one.

Answer: Texas Hold'em Poker

(Rules quote taken from the World Series of Poker official rules).

In Texas Hold'em, these three "flop" cards are then followed by two additional board cards. The players then combine these cards with two personal cards to try and make the best five card hand.

A major impetus for the variant's popularity has been the World Series of Poker, where No-Limit Hold'em has been the main event since 1971. The main event at the 2017 tournament featured a prize of more than $8 million for first-place finisher Scott Blumstein.