h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I know a variation of this game called S**thead and played by the members of the Lower Sixth of Tiffin Boys School in 1988.

The major difference is that if a ten is laid the stack below it is cleared out of the game and the person who laid it gets to lay another card. The same thing happens if someone lays four of a kind on the top of the stack, or completes four of a kind, say by laying the 5 of hearts on top of the three other fives. The Jack doesn't do anything and there is no way of changing the direction of play.

Other minor differences are that you are allowed to swap the cards in your hand with those that are face up in front of you. Ensuring you have the lower cards at the start of play and those advantageous 'wild' cards and picture cards for later on. The person who starts is the first person to the left of the dealer who has one or more threes, if there are no threes in anybody's hands it moves on to the first person to the left of the dealer with a four or fours, it carries on in that vein until the first card is laid and the game continues...

This variation probably has an advantage of being a slightly faster game, but no doubt both variations have their proponents. They definitely kept me and my school chums entertained during those dull free periods over those A-level years. And I'm sure the head of the sixth form enjoyed the tuneful chorus of players calling the loser 'S**thead' at the top of their voices!! Better than studying my Maths and Physics texts...

Cheers

Kd

Yup, shithead it is. Those tens are great, and the four-of-a-kind rule means you can come back from a hideous losing streak... Great for coach journeys and "sunny" seaside holidays.

So is it a location thing?

I notice references to London and Bexhill on Skunk's 'homepage' I'm a Kingston-upon-Thames born Tooting living kinda guy and the original researcher Lupa Mirabilis, whilst not really specifying her location seems to have an American bent to her home page. Are these two games linked in the same way as American English and True English are? Separated in Elizabethan times and evolving in isolation since then? Or am I just asking way to many bizarre questions?

The best games I have played have been with a number of experts and a few beginners, usually away from home for the weekend, during a lull in the middle of the afternoon, just before the run up to the evening social activity. A good way to get the 'juices' flowing!!

Cheers

Kd

In Norn Ireland it's called Shithead...

One friend calls it shithead but another friend calls it gobshite.(but they may well have made it up)

That's the variation I know. One drunken night we also introduced some extra rules:

4's reverse direction - clockwise\anti-clockwise.
7's change up and down, i.e. whether the cards are played in ascending or descending order.
8's miss a go (can't skip past yourself, though)
9's are wildcards and can be played as any time
5's and J's require an odd card to be laid next
6's and Q's require an even card

Kings and Aces count as odd, and Ace is high.

Also, if you played out of turn or laid a bad card you picked up the pack.

The 7 rule made it tricky to judge what was a good card as keeping, say, Kings could come back to bite you on the bum if someone laid a 7 before your next go. It slowed the game down no end but made made it more of a laff.

We called it Sh*thead when I was at college and the real beauty of it was you could update the rules every now then (providing everyone agrees) by adding new wildcards. The only being that it makes it harder for beginners to learn, which we used to our advantage on the freshers!!

It was Sh*thead when I played it, exactly the same rules as described by dreamraven.
Oh, and I learnt it off a guy from Bristol, to see if location really does make a difference.

I've always played with the ten and four-of-a-kind rules, too. However, I happen to be all the way from Atlanta, Georgia. We call it Swedish Rummy, though. Took me a while to recognize it, with the different names.