Talk:Old maid (card game)

Variant removed

One variant from the UK is known as Scabby Queen. The concept of this game is identical, with one exception. When the loser (the player with the single remaining Queen) is found, the deck of cards (including the remaining Queen but not the Jokers) is shuffled and the loser cuts the deck. The card on the bottom of the pile they picked up then decides their "punishment". If a red card (heart or diamond) is chosen, then the player is rapped on the back of the hand with the deck. If a black card (spades or clubs) is chosen, then he/she has the entire deck scrapped across their knuckes. The number of times this is performed is decided by the value of the card. Cards 2-10 carry face value, Jacks and Kings have a value of 10, Aces are 11 and Queens are 21. Be aware that this can rip the skin of your hands, and can be extremely painful, hence the name Scabby Queen. It is also better to use old or cheap cards, as the cards can also be damaged (cheap and older cards also tend to be softer and more bendable, so the "punishment" is less severe). However, today the game is often played without this punishment, especially where the pain inflicted is not considered appropriate by the players (such as when parents are playing with their children), though the game is still called Scabby Queen. As a result, the punishment aspect of the game is absent in some areas of the UK.

I've removed this is I doubt the prevalence of this variant. violet/riga (t) 13:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Just how widely played Scabby Queen is I couldn't say, but the game was common while I was at school a quarter century ago.

It was still fairly widely played on my school bus about 5 - 6 years ago. The version played at my school was worse than described, firstly because rather than being scraped across the knuckles the cards were used like a hand axe on the knuckles, and secondly, if you cut the "old maid" you got hit 52 times (either 26 on each hand, or 52 on the same hand, split between 2 bus journeys. I know at least one person ended up with a minor skin infection as a result of playing it. 2 people also engaged in a first blood game of it once. How this helps the article I'm not sure, but oh well Cryomaniac (talk) 21:52, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

'Folding' the deck (holding the cards curved across the width) when administering punishment was usually frowned upon, as this stiffened the deck considerably and was more likely to cause teacher-noticable damage to the knuckles. --Moriarty

Ugh, I remember Scabby Queen in primary school AND secondary school (only the younger years) back in the early 90s. I don't think too many girls played it, but it was certainly played among the boys. Sera404 (talk) 15:15, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Old Maid (card game)

There's a bit of a conflict between this and Old Maid, the card game. Looking up Old Maid instantly takes you to the spinster page, making this article much harder to find. There's also only a capital letter difference. I'm posting this on the SPinster discussion page as well. I think someone with a better knowledge of wikipedia style etc. to possibly make a redirect or mention of some kind. Vadigor 21:05, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Erm...

It doesn't exactly says what happens if you don't have a pair. So what do you do, pass? --Hanaichi 10:09, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes and then you offer your hand to your left hand neighbour to take a card as normal. Bermicourt (talk) 19:16, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

I played this game years ago, but didn't remember the rules. My daughter just brought home a specialized O.M. card deck and I'm stuck on one point. When does one draw from the pile? My daughter and I have been taking cards from each other's hands for 10 mins and have only made one match (she drew from the pile to replenish her hand). Can we choose to draw from the pile? I've searched multiple sites with directions and they are all silent on this point. -D.W. 20 Nov 13

There is no pile; the rules say all the cards are dealt. Bermicourt (talk) 19:16, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Move

Sorry, this edit summary was not transferred:

not capitalised in US or UK dictionaries, see list at http://www.onelook.com/?loc=bm3&w=old%20maid --Espoo (talk) 16:25, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Espoo, you make a good point, but I don't think it's quite so clear-cut. Many of the definitions you cite are to the term old maid, rather than the card game (either primarily, or exclusively). But in any event, dictionary definitions are not our authority for this sort of thing -- the manual of style is. I think the sections "Follow the sources" and "Section headings" are the most relevant.

When I initially did the move, it seemed readily apparent to me that "Old Maid" is a proper name, and that is reflected in the capitalization of the lead sentence of the article. However, now that I think about it, there are plenty of games whose names are not generally capitalized (like chess, backgammon) while others generally are (Texas Hold'em, Go Fish) so I'm not certain.

Following the sources, however, seems to lead to a clear result. I did a search on Google Scholar for the phrase "playing old maid" -- and every result capitalizes the name: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22playing+old+maid%22&as_sdt=2001&as_ylo=&as_vis=0

So, I think capitalizing the name is the way to go. In addition, the term "card game" in the title does not serve any useful purpose, as the disambiguation page already exists elsewhere. Do you agree that removing that term is a good idea? -Pete (talk) 21:37, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Pete. The links provided in the article clearly have separate entries for the card game. In all these reputable reference sources, the game is spelled lowercase either explicitly or implicitly. Reputable dictionaries always indicate if one meaning has different capitalisation than the main entry. And dictionaries specifically do the kind of analysis of reliable sources that we can only do in an amateur way and that we shouldn't even do because it would be OR.

And Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters) clearly states that Wikipedia's house style avoids unnecessary capitalization. So even if only some reputable encyclopedias and dictionaries lowercased the game, we could or even should use lowercase.

I must say you have a good point with the Google Scholar results and i'm very surprised, but dictionaries and encyclopedias specifically base their decisions also but not only on scholarly literature. Wikipedia is not a scholarly publication and should use the most common spelling used in professionally edited general English publications. If some (and especially if most) use lowercase, we should use that according to MOS.

If the article is moved to "old maid", we can add a hatnote referring to spinster. --Espoo (talk) 22:37, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

All makes sense. I see that we have an interesting situation with Old Maid redirecting here, but old maid redirecting to spinster. So regardless of what else we do, maybe we can improve that setup.

I ran the same search on Google News archive and Google Books and Plain old Google, with similar results, which I think addresses your point about scholarly publications vs. common usage. So, I still think (rather mildly) that it ought to be changed to the capitalized version.

But in the end, I'm really more concerned about the arrangement of the dabs and redirects, so -- whatever you think is best regarding caps, is fine by me. Thanks for an interesting discussion. -Pete (talk) 02:16, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Baba-nuki and Jiji-nuki

In Japan, the widely played variants are Baba-nuki and Jiji-nuki. Baba-nuki is played with a normal deck, except with one joker. Jiji-nuki is played after someone picks a random "Old Maid" card from the full deck. Because they are popular in Anime – for example, in Higurashi, the characters are seen playing Jiji-nuki – "babanuki", "baba-nuki", "jijinuki", and "jiji-nuki" should be redirected to the "Variants" section of Old Maid. Anyone agree? — JapanYoshi (japanyoshi777@gmail.com) 22:11, 13 April 2013 (Japan Standard Time) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.103.54.242 (talk)

1861 census at Balsham, Cambridgeshire, England

In the 1861 census at the Church Rectory in Balsham, Cambridgeshire, England, the following is shown:

Reverend W H Chapman, head of household, age 78, rector of Balsham,

Elizabeth Carter Chapman, daughter, age 51, manufacturer of "Old Maid"

Amy Brown,age 45, cook,

Mary Dean, age 16, housemaid.

The reference for the census page: Class: RG 9; Piece: 1030; Page: 17 Enumeration District : 2

Black Peter

Many European langage call the game Black Peter. The German Wikipedia suggests this was named after a criminal in 1811. So was the game invented after then? A mention of this would be good as it is often believed that the name is of racist origin, though cards were often depicted as a stereotyped negro and the name is used pejoratively by some this belief about a racialized origin is wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.162.68.114 (talk) 02:56, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

That's right. An example of uninformed prejudice and postmodern thinking trumping the facts. Before assuming anything with "black" in it is automatically racist, it's always wise to ask "why?" and investigate. In this case Black Peter the card game is almost certainly named after Johann Peter Petri, a (white) German highwayman known as Old Black Peter, probably because he was once a charcoal burner. Bermicourt (talk) 19:25, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Old Maid with Uno

I think it could also be played with Uno cards. I mean like using the Uno cards to play Old Maid, because you mentioned that it could be played with a deck poker cards.

The same color and symbol cards are a pair, then you can use a color switch as a left out, to be the Old Maid. But using all the cards are a bit too much, so maybe using only 1/3 of the deck, and make sure all could be paired except for the Old Maid (color switcher) card.

Try that out with friends and see if it works, so that you can play both Uno and Old Maid with the same deck of cards!

—Hedyhyry (talk) 07:29, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Bluffing? Where?

The lead claims there is bluffing, and the infobox says "low-medium skill", but the description looks like it is purely random chance, no strategy involved at all. Am I missing something? --mfb (talk) 02:41, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

I guess there's some simple bluffing possible when you present your hand to a player for them to choose a card. If I hold out a fan of five cards with the second card sticking out a little (maybe even telling you out loud what that card might be), you have to decide what I'm trying to trick you into. Certainly if you're down to two cards and one of them is the Old Maid, you'd want to do everything you could to trick the next player into taking a particular card from you rather than the other. That seems as much of a bluffing game as rock-paper-scissors.

The article did have a line about players being allowed to shuffle their hand before presenting it to the next player, which would make the game genuinely random - but this doesn't appear in any of the sources. --Lord Belbury (talk) 10:24, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

This is solved by changing the text to "The game can include an element of bluffing", which I've implemented. Gregorytopov (talk) 05:39, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that the game doesn't involve bluffing or even individual betting, period, so that doesn't even begin to solve it. The solution is obvious: Delete the false claim (and its accompanying sfn template which doesn't correspond to any reference) from the article.--Martin IIIa (talk) 02:25, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

The Gallagher 2015 template turns out to be the 2015 book Shuffle & Deal by Tara Gallagher, which says of the game Practice your bluffing in Old Maid - don't let anyone know you have her, so getting rid of her will be easier. I've restored a mention of bluffing. Belbury (talk) 19:27, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Mention of bluffing in the literature is a very recent thing. I can find no mention of it before Beattie in 2009 and Gallagher is the only other one. A 1991 US Hoyle talks about 'coffeehousing', but that's not quite the same thing. Having said that, my experience is that, players, including children will naturally find ways to encourage their neighbour to take the Old Maid. Bermicourt (talk) 21:13, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Searching for mentions of "strategy" for the game, 101 Best Family Card Games from 1992 has a lot of casual advice about keeping a straight face, play-acting and second-guessing. Belbury (talk) 21:23, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

@Jpgordon: when you removed the cited article text on bluffing, you commented "that's not bluffing". Could you please help us understand what you see bluffing as? Thanks. Bermicourt (talk) 16:01, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

There's a faster way to get your answer; just go to the very wikilink which was used in the text Jpgordon removed, Bluff (poker). Martin IIIa (talk) 20:58, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I should also point out that, while it's impossible to be certain of what Gallagher meant due to lack of context (the quoted portion is from a one-sentence sidebar), the wording suggests that she was not saying that Old Maid involves bluffing, but that while playing Old Maid you can practice an aspect of bluffing (namely, a poker face) in order to prepare for card games which involve bluffing.--Martin IIIa (talk) 20:31, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

full deck

it would be nice if a complete deck was availble,as high quality image if possible in public domain.85.149.83.125 (talk) 11:34, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

old maid v. Old Maid

According to Ngram Viewer, the spelling "Old Maid" for the game appears to be overwhelmingly more common that "old maid" in English WP:RS viz:

• "played Old Maid" is around 10 times more common that "played old maid" - see here
• "game of Old Maid" is over 12 times more common than "game of old maid" - see here
• "playing Old Maid" is from 2-5 times more common than "playing old maid" - see here

A search on "old maid" v. "Old Maid" doesn't work because the term "old maid" is clearly used to refer to a spinster, etc., and so we can't pick out the gaming references. Bermicourt (talk) 21:57, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

I've updated the stats above. Meanwhile, bucking the trend, dictionaries tend to use lowercase, e.g. Encyclopædia Britannica, Oxford Dictionaries, Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, Merriam-Webster. At some point it would make more sense to move the article to uppercase to reflect the outside world. Bermicourt (talk) 15:20, 24 October 2022 (UTC)