A quiz on the cards

I’m not sure how I stumbled into board game reviews being a regular feature of this blog that was once about travel in the southern midlands of England, but here we are. I had originally planned for this post to be another in that series, but it turns out I have a lot more to say than I thought. I should have known this would happen when I started requesting items to do with it from the National Library’s book stacks.

Rather than rush it out today, I thought I’d instead give you something I’ve written before. It’s a round from a quiz about playing cards that I did while standing in for a regular pub quiz host here in Edinburgh¹ who is also a friend of mine.

1. Playing cards were most likely invented in which modern-day country? An early type were known as “wine cards”, used to playing drinking games involving rice wine.
2. Which card is known as “the curse of Scotland”?
3. The jacks of which two suits are known as the “one-eyed jacks”?
4. Which Leeds-based playing-card maker introduced the game Monopoly to the UK market? Although it no longer exists as a separate company, its “Number 1” playing cards are still sold.
5. Which of the four suits in a standard 52-card pack is also a suit of traditional German playing cards? For a bonus point, name the other three German ones.
6. Uno is a card game, but Uno Stacko is not. It’s a cross between Uno and which other game, which is played with 54 wooden blocks?
7. In the Rider–Waite–Smith tarot card deck, Death carries a black flag with what symbol on it? It’s also the symbol of the largest historic county of England.
8. What name is shared by political drama series set in both the UK and the US? The character of Frank Underwood in the American version is an adaptation of Francis Urquhart in the British original.
9. Which 1965 film stars Steve McQueen as Eric Stoner, a poker star on the rise? It’s set in New Orleans, but its name includes a city in Ohio.
10. Which are there the most of: orderings of a 52-card pack, positions of a standard Rubik’s cube, or legal positions in chess?

Answers are on a separate page. Why not let us know in the comments how you got on?²

And if you’d like something more to read this Sunday: I recently moved some of my old maths-themed posts over to this blog, from an old themed one that was still online but that I’d half-forgotten about (once upon a time, last week’s Strictly post would have been on there). If you were hoping for board games content this week, you might enjoy the Scrabble-themed two-parter “Double Double Word Score”.

1. Specifically, it was in Leith; I apologise to any of my readers who are annoyed at the suggestion that that is subordnate to Edinburgh. ↩︎
2. Not to sound needy or anything, but since I moved the blog to here I don’t get blog stats any longer. This is because I can’t be bothered working out how to do a privacy policy for them when it’s my responsibility to comply with GDPR I care deeply about your privacy. So I literally have no idea if you’re reading anything I write if you don’t tell me. ↩︎