Category: cribbage

The Mumbo Jumbo on Some Big Antique Cribbage Boards

Today, I’m going on a tangent about big, mostly antique cribbage boards which were specially made for making the scoring more complex. The main perpetrator (I mean manufacturer), was Drueke (variously pronounced as Drooky, Drew, Drooka).

The Drueke name turns up on most of the big two, three and four track vintage cribbage boards you find for sale on eBay. There are a few other makers, but Drueke is the one you commonly see. I don’t know anything about Drueke except it was a well-known maker of board games including chess and cribbage sets. The company was based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

If you know how to play the basic version of cribbage, you probably think it’s complicated enough as is. But Drueke made boards that allowed you to score many aspects of the game right on the playing surface.

There are other 4 track cribbage boards that aren’t designed to allow players to go crazy with scoring everything you do in a cribbage game. But typically, you’ll see a lot of what Drueke called the “Once-A-Round Scoremaster” boards. I got curious about the rules and found a couple of web pages on which I found out more about them. The rules are a little hard to find and a little vague when you do find them.

I couldn’t find out anything about them even on the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) website—and it’s the main authority about cribbage rules.

Reddit has a page titled Cribbage-Four Track Board (Example Rules). Click the “read more” below the image. It also shows a nice photo of a typical board. It’s tough to follow.

Then I found a Board Game Geek (BGG) page on which a guy named Jeff Bridghman outlined a clearer explanation of how to play on such a board. It’s actually better than the rules included with the Drueke game. By the way, if you have trouble with the web page, just reload it by typing “4 track boards and all the extra mumbo jumbo?” and hit the search button again.

What puzzled me were his comments about the High Hand score. He said his board had something I’ve not seen on pictures of the boards on eBay. The High Hand score goes from 1-10 on every one of those I saw. On the other hand, his board shows actual scores (14 through 29). I think it must have been a custom build. The thread has longevity; it started in 2011 and the latest comment I saw was in 2023.

If you buy the Drueke board, you’ll need the rules. But even if you have the Drueke rules, you’ll probably need something more specific. Maybe Drueke figured people would be more creative than they are. It’s a lot like life. I think sometimes you have to make up some rules.

Cribbage for Three Players

Hey, I found a great website for learning how to play cribbage with more than two players. In fact, you can learn how to play all kinds of games. If you already know how to play two-hander cribbage, you can learn the other common variations. Here’s the YouTube on the 3 player version.

Thoughts on Down Time Activities for Land Survey Technicians

I was just thinking about the old-time land survey crews. When I was getting on the job training as a survey technician, the typical land survey crews were at least 2-3 persons. One rodman, one instrument man, and a crew chief who organized the job, which could be property or construction jobs.

Nowadays, you get by sometimes with one man doing the jobs using a theodolite that measures angles and distances. You don’t always need a physical measuring tape; you can use something they call “total stations.”

It’s cheaper for engineering companies to use one man survey outfits. On the other hand, one disadvantage is the lack of mentoring for learners who want to become land surveyors or civil engineers.

Mentoring from surveyors on the survey back in the day not only taught me such skills as how to throw and wrap a surveyor’s steel tape—it also taught me how to work well with others as a team. Of course, this was transferrable to working on the psychiatry consultation-liaison service in a big hospital as well.

It’s well known that playing cards in the truck while waiting for the rain to stop was an essential skill. I don’t know how they manage downtime nowadays. We didn’t play cards on the consultation service during downtime, partly because we didn’t have much downtime.

Anyway, as I mentioned in a recent post, we played Hearts in the truck on rain days. I always sat in the middle. At the time, I was a terrible card player in general. It was a cutthroat game and I had trouble remembering which cards had been played.

When you consider that the strong suit of engineers and surveyors is math ability, you’d think that survey crews would have figured out a way to play Cribbage during downtime. You can have a Cribbage game with 3 or 4 people although I’ve never played it that way. If there are 3 players, it can still be cutthroat.

The one problem I can see is that, the guy sitting in the middle would have to set the board on his lap. You’d almost need a special, custom-made board which would have a space for placing the cards to keep track of what’s been played. I think that might have made things easier for me.

The other drawback to one man survey crews is that pretty much the only card game you can play is solitaire.

This is National Scrabble Day

I almost forgot that April 13 is National Scrabble Day. I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about it before, so I’ll inflict some thoughts on you now about it and add some others about International Cribbage Day, which is on February 10 annually—and which I evidently tend to forget every year.

The big news about Scrabble is that it’s changing in a major way, at least in Europe. I guess some people think the game is too difficult and they want to make it less “intimidating.” That’s what Mattel in Europe says, anyway. Others accuse the company of “dumbing it down.” I guess a certain generation of players want the game to be less competitive and more cooperative.

The thing about Scrabble Together is that it’s available only in Europe—for now. I just found out that Mattel is based in California and owns the rights to the game around most of the world. However, Hasbro licenses the game in the U.S. and has no plan to offer Scrabble Together in America.

We play Scrabble rarely—I’m not a very good player so I tend to avoid it. Sena has a couple of computer versions on CD, The Hasbro version of which is getting to be about eBay age. I think I bought it in 1999 (or was it 1998?) at Best Buy, back in the day when you could buy stuff in the actual stores. Even though the shelves looked pretty bare the last time I was there, web articles indicate it’s not going out of business, just evolving into online retailing.

Sena plays Maven (an interactive character that morphs, makes noises, and makes fun of or cheers your plays) on the Hasbro CD Scrabble version. She plays the Advanced Level and says she loses most of the time. Maven is very competitive. Funny thing, this doesn’t discourage Sena from playing. I tried to play Maven yesterday and got slaughtered. Maven thought it was pretty funny.

This change to Scrabble Together reminds me of a big story about a guy named Nigel Richards who won the French World Scrabble Championship Tournament in 2015—and he doesn’t speak a word of French. He memorized the French Dictionary. He concentrates on maximizing his scores without focusing on the actual words. It’s really more about the numbers than the vocabulary. Nigel Richards is definitely competitive and probably would not be interested in Scrabble Together.

Scrabble Together could attract more young people to an old game, which is more than you might say about cribbage. Just to be clear, cribbage is a competitive game and always has been. Every once in a while, you’ll see interesting descriptions about this two-hander card game which uses a board and can teach you a thing or two about math, strategy, logic, and building friendships.

People often observe that typical cribbage players tend to be older. It’s common to see there are fewer players under the age of 50. Many fans of cribbage try to attract younger players to the game by extolling its virtues and assuring younger novices they’ll be treated kindly. You can see that on the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) website page entitled “Cribbage Club Code of Congeniality.” Cribbage, while a competitive game, can be supportive as well. It’s not impossible.

Try not to let an experienced cribbage enthusiast persuade you to play for money.

Cribbage Pro Computer Game Demo on Brutal Level!

Sena and I enjoy cribbage. I sometimes practice using computer games. You might remember my video about Cribbage Classic last year. The other day I did a demonstration of gameplay on another game called Cribbage Pro. The developer is Fuller Systems, Inc.

It has 3 levels of difficulty: Standard (which you might call easy); Challenging; and Brutal. The developer of Cribbage Pro says that the Brutal level makes virtually no mistakes. It’s tough to beat. I won 3 in a row and then lost 2 before winning the 6th game. Fuller Systems, Inc. follows American Cribbage Congress (ACC) rules.

It’s a nice way to learn cribbage, play casual mode, or play against others on line in multiplayer mode, although I’ve never done the latter.

You can learn a lot about cribbage from playing Cribbage Pro. It has a tutorial and numerous other teaching resources for learning how to play either just for fun or with the goal of playing in tournaments.

It has a Muggins Rule Mode, which lets you count your scores manually and challenge the computer if it makes an error in its own scoring. Then you pick up the difference in score yourself. I’ve read that some cribbage experts say Muggins is mainly for people who like to argue. I’ve tried to play Muggins on Cribbage Pro, but frankly could never understand the procedure. However, among the numerous settings available you can count manually without activating the Muggins Rule.

Cribbage Pro is available for many platforms. It’s free if you can put up with ads. I paid $5 to get rid of ads. But the game itself has popups to remind you to either register to play in multiplayer mode or to rate the game. I’ve given it a favorable rating.

Jim on a Winning Streak on the Bigfoot Cribbage Board

Ever since we got the Bigfoot cribbage board, I’ve been winning. If you believe in lucky streaks, I’m on one. However, Sena wins most of the time when we play on the jumbo cribbage board.

Is it the Bigfoot cards? Is it the Bigfoot pajamas? Sena was so overwhelmed she put her house slippers on backwards.

My reward was to put together more knockdown furniture.

Jim Learns About Induction Cooktops

I’m learning about induction cooktops. I know I’m way late in the game. The house we bought a little over two and a half years ago came with an induction cooktop. It’s the first one we ever had; we always used gas or electric stoves.

The main topic here are the noises including clicking noises we heard when using the induction cooktop. I say “we” but I should say Sena because I am allergic to kitchens.

I had to search the internet about induction cooktops. I found out way more than I wanted to know about them. I guess I can summarize that in a few lines:

Induction cooktops:

  • They work using electricity, not gas. They generate energy from an electromagnetic field below the glass cooktop surface which transfers energy to the magnetic cookware, which causes them to heat up.
  • They’re more energy efficient than gas.
  • The electro magnetic field (EMF) they emit have not been shown to increase the risk for cancer.
  • Although some chefs say hard anodized cookware won’t work on induction cooktops, they will if the bottom of the cookware has a ferromagnetic surface (meaning it has iron in it).
  • You can tell most of the time if a pan will work on induction cookware by holding a magnet up to the bottom of it and checking to see if the magnet sticks. If the magnet sticks, you’re good to go.

I finally checked that last point about magnetism by suddenly realizing that we had a magnet. It happens to be the magnetized lid for the space holding a deck of cards and pegs on our large cribbage board. It stuck to the bottom of one of our new KitchenAid hard anodized pans.

The old pans we had clicked a lot and there are reasons for the variety of noises you can hear. Most of the websites I noticed which describe this problem also have videos about which don’t have audio. Many of the websites say that some clicking is normal. Others will make an effort to identify the cause for the noises.

Our new cookware doesn’t make any noise at all. And they heat up very quickly. You don’t need to crank up the heat and can keep the power level pretty low.

The sound of screaming is probably from the extraterrestrial you’re trying to fry. Don’t do that.

Christmas Day 2022 Antics!

Christmas Day at our house was a lot of fun. I got a coffee mug that specifies the importance of cribbage. Sena got a throw that sort of complements the throw she got me on our anniversary.

Those throws add a lot to the ambience in the room. And the coffee mug really speaks to the “importanter feature” of cribbage in our life nowadays.

This was the one of the best Christmases ever. We’re up to our ears in gratitude. And that’s the most importantest thing of all.

Is That Patty on Our Sasquatch Cribbage Board?

Sena wondered if anybody ever talks about female Sasquatch creatures. That reminded me that our Sasquatch cribbage board has an image of Bigfoot that looks familiar. I looked up the Patterson-Gimlin video on YouTube. The creature caught on video has been called Patty.

If you compare Patty in the video with the image carved into our cribbage board, there’s a resemblance. At least I think there is. At one point in the video, when Patty looks back at the camera, it looks very much like the carving—at least to me.

Scrub to about 54 seconds into the video and also at 1 minute and 28 seconds.