Calvinball Cribbage Crowd – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Sena asked me the other day if I had checked back on the price of a fancy Canadian cribbage board, Cribbage Rumble. I had not, so of course since that was my assignment, I looked on the Michaud Toys website and found that the high tariff price had disappeared, apparently. There were no alarming notes in red type with multiple exclamation points. And the price was $89.95.

However, as I noted yesterday, they replaced the message that U.S. orders are subject to a 35% tariff and a 25% UPS brokerage fee paid before delivery!

That is too high.

This led to a search for more information about Cribbage Rumble, which sounds a lot like Crib Wars (or Cribbage Wars, if you prefer since I think these games are all the same animal). In fact, it didn’t surprise me very much to find a Facebook post from Michaud Toys enthusiastically advertising “Cribbage Wars” 7 months ago for the low, low price of $89.95.

That’s right; they called it Cribbage Wars just 7 months ago although they call it Cribbage Rumble nowadays. Why is that? I’m glad you asked.

I began to wonder just what exactly is Crib Wars, is that different from Cribbage Wars, and why in blazes does the sight of the game board always prompt people to exclaim that it reminds them of Snakes and Ladders or Chutes and Ladders?

There’s this convoluted and confusing story about Chutes and Ladders and Snakes and Ladders. I think it’s partly because the Crib Wars board layout sort of reminds people in my age group of the layout of Chutes and Ladders. There’s this convoluted and sometimes contradictory history of the name of Snakes and Ladders being changed to Chutes and Ladders (some writers reverse them) to make it less scary for kids.

I think the story of the origin of the game has something to do with teaching morals to children in India. Some web articles say the original game from India was called Snakes and Ladders. Some people make things even worse by calling the game “Shoots and Ladders.” In modern times, the way you played the Chutes and Ladders was to spin a dial and move up a ladder or down a chute and you were supposed to try to be the first to reach the final goal. The morality theme was abandoned and—you know where that left all of us.

Milton-Bradley changed the name from Snakes and Ladders to Chutes and Ladders in 1943 because they thought snakes scared kids.

Where was I? Oh, the Crib Wars and Cribbage Wars game are probably the same, as I said earlier. When I try to search the term http://www.cribwars.com (a suggested search term), I just get an error message. When I search for “cribbage wars” I end up at a game supply store called Ebonwood and they’re located in Appleton, Wisconsin—which is a very nice place. I interviewed for a position in a private practice psychiatry clinic there years ago.

Ebonwood sells the Crib Wars game for $210. You can find the rules on their web site. The board they sell doesn’t put much in the way of markings on it, not even numbers. A reviewer on BoardGameGeek site reviews it and shows a very nice photo of the board. All of them look pretty much like that.

I think the origin of Crib Wars is fascinating. Recall that Michaud Toys in Ontario, Canada has produced and is marketing a Cribbage Rumble board (which is really just another Crib Wars board). It turns out that the two inventors of Crib Wars are from Ontario, Canada as well. One of them is Norm Ackland, an Elvis Tribute Artist, and Robert J. Prettie. They patented the game in the late 1990s.

On the other hand, you can buy a copy of the game for about $30 at Amazon or Walmart and be cursing your luck for hours over a game which many people play only once or twice. It can take hours to play.

That pretty much makes it just another Calvinball crib game, thanks to the Calvinball Cribbage Crowd (CCC). I’m on to their tricks—and they know it.

Today we went back to playing standard 6-card cribbage and it was a relief! After all of the Calvinball cribbage variations we’ve been muddling through, getting back to a standard game felt great.

I thought of a name for an imaginary group that comes up with all of the cribbage variations (whether they exist or not): the Calvinball Cribbage Crowd (CCC). The name “Calvinball crib” came from a Reddit thread contributor who replied to someone who posted an inquiry if anyone had ever played 10 card cribbage. The answer was “Yes, there have been many many posts of Calvinball crib.”

Actually, there’s another instance of the Calvinball name applied to cribbage on Reddit. It occurred on a different topic with a lot of comments about how to teach cribbage to someone else: “Cribbage is basically Calvinball.”

If you just google the term “Calvinball cribbage” you’ll find my blog posts using it in the titles in the last week.

As a reminder, the word “Calvinball” comes from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip series which ran in the papers between 1985-1995. It’s even defined in the Oxford English Dictionary. The word is used mainly in North America. The definition as it relates to cribbage is that it refers to the creation of a so many different rules made by different cribbage players that it ultimately leads to a sense of chaos in that there seems to be no consistent set of rules at all.

Anyway, as we played some of the cribbage variations that include increasing numbers of playing cards, I began to wonder why there isn’t a 12-card cribbage ever listed. That’s because the so-called 11 and 13 card variants are listed on the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) website, yet there’s no mention of a 12-card variant.

What gives? Is this a ploy to confuse the public about cribbage? Is the CCC a secret splinter group of the ACC? And is the CCC attempting to subvert the effort to maintain the supremacy of the classic standard 6-card game?

Let’s hope so (I’m only kidding). But this line of thought probably led to Sena asking if the United Kingdom has a national cribbage organization like the ACC in North America. I googled it for the first time today. In 2017, the United Kingdom Cribbage Association (UKCA) was formed to address the declining popularity of cribbage in the country, which actually got started there by Sir John Suckling in the 17^th century. Recall the ACC got started in 1980.

Naturally, that prompts the question of how common is Calvinball cribbage in the UKCA? You knew I was going to say that and don’t try to deny it. It’s difficult to answer. It looks like they prefer the 6-card game to 121 also although, admittedly, I didn’t investigate it thoroughly. They seem to be more conservative. So far, I don’t see any evidence (yet) for a UK chapter of the CCC. Of course this leads to the conspiracy theory (why not?) of the UK colluding with the Canadians to create the secret CCC in an effort to undermine the popularity of standard cribbage in northwestern and northeastern U.S. (where cribbage is very popular) and instead promote a collection of Calvinball crib variations to preoccupy Americans with counting endless complicated scoring combinations that prevent the completion of any games which typically last several hours and lead to starvation, exhaustion, confusion (did you say there are 40 fifteens for two or 142?), hemorrhoids from sitting too long, and the dreaded cankles.

In case you think I’m exaggerating, try to answer this question: Why is there no information whatsoever on 12-card cribbage? Don’t include AI instructions because they are confabulated.