How to play Noddy
The rules of Noddy, and a game played out one move at a time.
The rules are below. Noddy is cribbage arithmetic on three cards, so if you know that game you are most of the way there. If you would rather watch than read, press play: we deal a short match on the real table and stop on every move to say what scored and why.
Press play and we deal a short game of Noddy on the real table. It stops on every move and says what just happened and what you could do next.
The deal
Two of you, one standard pack. The dealer gives three cards each, one at a time, starting with the other player, and turns the seventh card face up. That is the starter, and it belongs to both hands. The rest of the pack sits out the whole hand.
If the starter is a jack, the dealer takes two points straight away. The player who did not deal is called the elder, and the elder does everything first this hand.
The show
Before a card is played, each hand is counted together with the starter, elder first. Any cards adding to fifteen score two. Any cards adding to twenty-five score two as well. Faces count ten and aces one.
A pair is two. Three cards in a row are a run for two, four in a row a run for four. Three or four cards of one suit are a flush, a point a card. Hold the jack of the starter suit and that is Knave Noddy, one more.
Elder first matters. If the elder reaches 31 points in the show, the match is over and the dealer never gets to count.
The count to 31
The elder leads, then you take turns putting one card down on a shared pile, keeping a running total. It may never pass 31.
Land the count on fifteen or twenty-five for two. Match the card before yours for a pair, two points. Three the same in a row is six and four is twelve. The last three or more cards making a run or a flush score the way they do in the show, and the jack of the starter suit going down is worth one.
Hit 31 exactly and you take two and the count is over. If it is your turn and nothing you hold fits, you say go, the other player takes one point, and the count is over just the same. There is one count per deal, and whatever is still in hand goes aside.
How a match ends
The deal crosses the table after every hand, so you take turns being elder. The first to 31 points wins, the moment they get there, even halfway through a show or a count.
That makes a match short. One big show is a third of it. We follow one written reconstruction of the game, Justin du Coeur's, and do not mix in anybody else's rules.