Month: December 2025

11 Card Cribbage Now!

Hey, it’s New Year’s Eve and it’s time for 11-card cribbage! Recall, the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) website has a cribbage variations page in which the unknown author reports there being many cribbage variants, including 11 and 13 card cribbage.

So, yesterday we played 12-card cribbage and we decided to address the 11-card variant today. We intend to tackle the 13-card variant “next year.”

We did OK, although I had a miscount (counted 31 in the play instead of 30 near the end of the game). Again, it took us about 20 minutes to play it.

Scores can be difficult to count so you might want to check on this link for the calculator.

We made up the rules because, of course, there are no rules. This puts any of these game variants into the Calvinball Crib category. This is because there are no established rules and the name just has a little fun with that name because of the definition of the name Calvinball:

“Activity reminiscent of the imaginary game of Calvinball (see etymology), in not following any 1994- discernible rules, or in which individuals act in a self-servingly inconsistent manner. Also (and in earliest use) as a modifier.”

Did you know there’s a place in Canada that makes a Calvinball Cribbage board? It’ll set you back $140. We can’t tell if there’s a tariff on it.

Did you know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has confabulated a description of Calvinball Cribbage? I copied it for you:

“Calvinball Cribbage is a humorous mashup of the chaotic, rule-free game from Calvin & Hobbes with traditional Cribbage, often involving themed boards or rule modifications, where the core idea is applying Calvinball’s fluid, make-it-up-as-you-go spirit to Cribbage’s scoring and play, adding wild, non-sensical rules like using mallets, changing hand values, or scoring points for silly actions, making each round unique and unpredictable, not a single defined game but a creative approach to Cribbage. 

What it is (The Calvinball Aspect):

  • No Fixed Rules: Just like original Calvinball, there’s no single set of rules; the players invent them as they go.
  • Rule Changes: A key rule is that rules can’t be repeated, and players constantly invent new scoring, actions, or penalties.
  • Props & Actions: You might use mallets, balls, trees, or make up actions like “scoring three points for pointing at a cloud” or “losing a turn for looking left”. 

How it Applies to Cribbage:

  • Themed Boards: You can find or make custom cribbage boards featuring Calvin & Hobbes, adding visual flair.
  • Modified Scoring: Instead of just points for pairs and runs, you might add a “Hobbes Bonus” for a specific card or penalize for “too much logic”.
  • Strategic Chaos: Players still play cribbage (cards, pegs, crib), but the gameplay is constantly disrupted by invented rules, turning strategic plays into potential jokes or absurd victories. 

Example Calvinball Cribbage “Rules”:

  • “If you play a 7, you must hop on one foot until your next turn”.
  • “The crib gets 5 points if it contains a card with a face on it” (referencing Calvin’s drawings).
  • “A ‘skunk’ is achieved by making your opponent laugh out loud”. 

In essence, Calvinball Cribbage is about injecting unpredictable fun and silliness into the structured world of cribbage, making it a game of spontaneous creativity rather than strict strategy. “

How do you feel about AI now? You know, I wonder why somebody hasn’t yet come up with a new club: Calvinball Cribbage Congress (CCC). Somebody could make a cool tee shirt for the club.

We wish everyone a Happy New Year in 2026!

Twelve Card Cribbage on the Tournament Board!

As promised, we played a game of 12-card cribbage on the tournament board today. What an adventure! We both missed pairs in counting high scores on one round (that we noticed after viewing the video)—but we got through it.

I don’t know of anyone else who’s made a video of this wacky variant, but let me know if you do. You know, it’s remarkable, we practiced it all morning and kerfuffles were the rule when it came to counting hands. You’ll see them. Yet we still finished the game in about 20 minutes because the scores were so high!

This is Calvinball Crib for sure. We don’t know where this tangent will go next.

Sunrise A Little Before 2026

We saw a really pretty sunrise this morning. Sunrises always make feel expectant, hopeful, and a little excited. It reminded me of that show “Sunrise Earth,” anyone remember those? They didn’t even have music, just the sounds of nature and the scene of dawn slowly giving its own introduction.

Anyone for 12-Card Cribbage?

You know the winter is getting long when Sena and I talk about trying to play 12-card cribbage. We’ve come up with a way to manage the deal and the crib and we’ll try to play it tomorrow.

Sena’s been bugging me for a while now to try playing both 11-card and 12-card cribbage—despite the fact that no rules exist for them. There is the mystery of the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) having a section in their cribbage history which clearly claims that:

“Did you know that there are at least 18 variations to the BASIC game of cribbage? There is the basic 2 or 4 handed game, and then there are the 5 card, 7 card, 11 card and 13 card cribbage games. “

Notice that the author (who doesn’t have a byline) says there are both 11-card and 13-card variations. On the other hand, I’ve spoken with someone else at the ACC who knows everything there is to know about tournament cribbage and he and everyone else he asked at a recent tournament never heard of these variants. And you can’t find them anywhere on the web.

This whole Calvinball Crib thing comes from our having tried 7-card, 8-card, 9-card, and 10-card cribbage. Sena wore me down. So, we cobbled together some rules for 12-card cribbage. We’ll let you know what happens. If anybody out there has suggestions and comments, let us know!

Svengoolie Movie: “The Creation of the Humanoids”

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

Last night, I watched the Svengoolie movie, “The Creation of the Humanoids,” and I don’t mind telling you, I was reminded of Isaac Asimov’s book, “I, Robot.” Believe it or not, I purposedly avoided reading any other reviews of this movie to see if they mention the possible connection of Asimov’s book with this movie. It preceded the film by 12 years, and it’s at least conceivable that producers and writers might have been inspired by the plot, took the idea of the robot laws from the book and dressed it up in at least some of the dialogue. I think there’s also a connection to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our own time.

The last two stories in Asimov’s book are “Evidence” and “The Evitable Conflict,” both of which seem to be exemplified in “The Creation of the Humanoids.” They’re both about the conflict between robots and humans and how difficult it is to apply the Laws of Robotics, the first of which is that “a robot not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

The robots in the film actually create the humanoids with the overall goal of saving the human race from extinction. And they’re programmed to obey the “Prime Law” which prevents them from killing humans. The psychological conflict of Captain Kenneth Cragis (Don Megowan) and Maxine Megan (Erica Elliot) and the rationale the robots supply for what they did both to and for humans echo the Laws of Robotics.

In the movie, the politics of the racist conflict between the robots and the group calling themselves the members of the Order of Flesh and Blood remind me of the Civil War—right down to the uniforms of the latter and their slur for the robots, which is “Clickers” (substitute another two-syllable slur and you get the idea).

In Asimov’s story “The Evitable Conflict,” something called the Machine takes control of a variety of factors manipulating natural resources, goods, services, and even the social fabric on the planet to protect humans, who have a penchant for overusing and destroying resources and each other. The robots in “The Creation of the Humanoids” do something similar and break the fourth wall to tell you about it.

Anyway, Captain Kenneth Cragis is a member of the Order of Flesh and Blood and reminds me of a character in the 2004 movie “I, Robot,” which is Sonny. An important part of Cragis is hidden from the audience as well as himself.

The dialogue is heavily intellectualized and the robots, which are supposed to be blue, wind up showing up in different colors and those eyes! Cragis and his sister, Esme Cragis Milos (Frances McCann) have a protracted and almost poetic discussion about their differences of opinion about the robots. I wonder if McCann’s revealing dress was intended to distract the audience from the dry declamations.

The scene in which Cragis confronts the robot Pax who has somehow chosen Esme to be his main squeeze is puzzling. Cragis sort of breaks Pax (David Cross) and converts him into a ’57 Chevy, which barely upsets Esme. The scene in which Dr. Raven (Don Doolittle), a robotic scientist, makes some adjustments on a disembodied arm is one example of many which proves why even Svengoolie calls this movie “a low budget” production. The furniture pieces look like they’re made for children; both Cragis and Esme might as well have sat on the floor.

Ok, so this sounds more like a review than my usual fibs and jokes, but I think it’s because the movie reminds me of something that is on a grander scale. Speaking of scales, except for the low production value, I thought movie was pretty good and I would give it a 4/5 Shrilling Chicken Rating. Sena, who watched it this morning, thought it was really good and would give it a 5/5 rating despite “the glassy eyeballs.” So, I’ll give it a 4.5/5.

Shrilling Chicken Rating 4.5/5

Mindfulness in 10 Card Cribbage? Yes and No!

So, as long as we had the cribbage tournament board out, we decided to play 10 card cribbage yesterday. This is not a game for mindfulness, at least for me. Each player gets 10 cards. You have to sort them into two 4 card hands and the dealer gets the usual 4 card crib.

That’s a lot of cards to sort through. I get a little flustered trying to figure out what to keep and what to throw to the crib. I have to decide which 4 card hand to start the play.

The more cards you have, the higher the scores. Some games take only about 15 minutes despite the plethora of scores you have to wade through. Overall, in tournaments you have to be able to play a 6-card game in 15 minutes, so it seems ironic you can do the same in a 10-card game.

You have to be mindful, in a way, to play these Calvinball crib variations. But I can get a little hyped. Maybe you can tell.

The Missing 29 Cribbage Board and a Little History

We’ve been searching around for our 29 Cribbage Board. It’s in the shape of 29 which is the highest score you can get in cribbage. The hand is typically shown with three 5’s and the nob Jack and the cut card is the other 5. This is usually a diamond 5, but the heart or the spade 5 is also shown on some boards. The odds of getting this hand are 1 in 216,580.

Sena didn’t find it after a thorough search top to bottom of our house, so it must have gotten lost in the move last year. One of the reasons why this suddenly became an issue of national importance is that I read another one of those long historic articles on the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) website—which never lists the bylines of the persons writing them.

It turns out that a guy named Edward M. Hirst in Canada who first designed and started making the 29 board by himself back in the early 1950s. Customers would wait months for them. They weren’t mass-produced until two years after he died. Crisloid, Inc. (based in Rhode Island) made them for a while and this name is familiar to me because I shopped for a giant cribbage board from them a few years ago. They had stopped making the 29 board long before then. Interestingly, they made one of those very complicated continuous 3 track cribbage boards with complicated scoring for things like “Legs” and other features that eventually were more of a hallmark with another famous cribbage board maker–Drueke Co. And then Drueke Co. started making the 29 boards.

Eventually manufacturing of the 29 boards moved to Taiwan because they could be made more cheaply there. Nowadays, America’s role in sales has moved to vendors, such as Hoyle, Bicycle, Walmart, etc. There’s a reddit thread which shows a picture of a 29 board which contains a short history of the board.

Anyway, by way of personal history, we started playing cribbage again in 2019 after a 20-year hiatus. I have a dim memory of us experimenting with several card games back then, including cribbage. And then we dropped card games for a long time. And about 5 or 6 years ago we got a 29 board, because it was interesting and cheap.

I made a YouTube video of the game. It got about 1,800 views. It had some of the features discussed in the ACC history, which we think is really interesting. The nob Jack and 5 cut card were diamonds. There was a 121 hole (which some boards don’t have, believe it or not!).

And there’s also a Cribbage Board Collector’s Society (CBCS). The interesting thing they point out is that no one has ever reported to them about finding a 29 board with the Jack and the 5 cut card in the club suit. I couldn’t find one on the web, even on Ebay.

We immediately shopped for another 29 board but the one we want is sold out. Until then, we can reminisce.

How About Traditional Cribbage?

We’ve been playing Calvinball cribbage so much lately, we thought it would be nice to play a game of standard 6-card cribbage on a tournament board we’ve had for several years. It seemed to go faster than it really did. We finished the game in 26 minutes but we’ve been able to play faster than that (see the post and YouTube “15 Minute Push.”

We got the tournament board several years ago from a guy who was making and shipping them from Florida. Nowadays he markets them through Walmart. It’s CreativeCrafthouse.

It was a nice break from the chaos of cribbage variants like Wicked Cribbage and Crib Wars.

Merry Wicked Cribbage Christmas!

We hope you all had as nice a Christmas as we did. We played Wicked Cribbage! It’s an overlay variation of 6-card cribbage. This turned out to be more fun than we every imagined. Short story—I got skunked! We made a video of the hilarity. Happy holidays!

And here’s a great Christmas card from Sena!