Snip Snap Snorum, the card game, online

Two games share the name. This is the sequence one

Look up Snip Snap Snorum and nearly every page hands you the matching game: each player in turn matches the rank of the card before, and the words are shouted as the cards land. That version is also spelled Snip Snap Snorem, and it is not the one dealt here. Ours is the sequence game, in which a run climbs one suit a rank at a time and ends after five cards. We built it from the five-card sequence section of John McLeod's rules page and left the matching rules out entirely.

McLeod finds the sequence game in nineteenth century sources and lists the related games: Snorem, Jig, which stops at four cards, and Earl of Coventry, where the calls become rhymes about the rank. None of those is here yet. Snap, the children's game, is another thing again, and three of the questions at the bottom say so.

How a run goes, with the five calls

The whole pack goes out, as evenly as it divides. The seat left of the dealer leads any card, saying Snip. Whoever holds the next card up in that suit is the next player: they must play it, wherever they sit, and call Snap. Snorum is the third card, High cockalorum the fourth card, Jingo the fifth. Say you lead the four of clubs. The seat across from you has the five: Snap. You hold the six yourself: Snorum. Somebody lays the seven, High cockalorum, and the last hand the eight, Jingo. The run is over and whoever played the eight leads next, with anything at all.

Ace is low and the king is the top of a suit, so a king never runs on into an ace. A run also dies early when the card it needs is already on the table, and the card that killed it takes the Jingo, whichever number it was. Whoever played the last card leads again. So a run can go round the table or sit with one seat for all five cards, and the turn order has nothing to do with who is next round the table.

The first player to get rid of every card wins on the spot, mid-run included. Every card left in the other hands counts one to the winner and one against its holder, and the table shows that as a hand result and stops there: no counters, no wagering, no match score carried over. That is one hand, and one hand is the game.

Two, three or four of you, and one link each

Press the button and you get a table with the other seats empty and a link for each of them. Pick two, three or four before you make it. Send a link to a person rather than posting it somewhere, because whoever opens it takes that seat. They open it, they sit down, the deal happens. Nobody signs up: no password, no email, no download. The one thing anybody types is a name for the chat.

The whole pack is dealt however many of you there are, so at two it is twenty six each and at three it is eighteen and seventeen and seventeen. Two is the sharpest version, because the run comes back to you far more often and a lead you can follow yourself is worth more. Four is the size the old rules deal, and the one where a run really does go round.

Chat is on at every table, and the host can switch voice on when they make it. Close the tab by accident and the table is still there for 48 hours, and the page you started from keeps a short list of the tables your browser is sitting at, so you click back in and your hand is where you left it.

Three computers, a pause button, and the one piece of advice we have

If there is nobody to send a link to, the computer table is a click away and deals four hands: you and Robin, Sage and Kit. Each one reads only its own hand. When one leads, it picks the card that starts the longest run it can play out alone, lowest rank first when two tie; when it follows, there is only one card it may play anyway, so there is nothing to think about. They are not clever, and in a game where the deal decides most of it, they do not need to be.

Which gives away the only strategy Snip Snap Snorum has room for, and this is our advice rather than McLeod's: lead from a suit where you also hold the next card or two above your lead. You play Snip, then Snap, maybe Snorum, before anyone else touches the run, and three cards gone from your hand is a lot in a race to empty it. A led king stops on the spot, so you shed a card and the lead comes straight back to you; the king is never a bad lead here.

The computers play a card about every second. Press Pause computers when you want to read the run, and Resume computers when you are done. Your hand sits face up, sorted by suit and rank, with the cards you may play lit up and the rest dimmed, and when you are following, the status line names the one card you can play. Every card carries its suit symbol and its name in text, so colour never has to do the work alone, and the table squeezes down to a phone screen without losing the run.

At a table with other people the run sits in the middle with the call under each card and the seat that played it, and every other hand is one face-down card and a number, so you can see how many cards somebody holds and not which ones.

Free, and what that costs you

Playing costs nothing. An ad may turn up now and again, and we would rather it stayed small and out of the way. There is no account, nothing to download and nothing to update: the page is the game. Nothing about a hand is saved anywhere once the table closes.

Why build a game this obscure at all? Because the aim of this site is, eventually, every game a pack of cards can be dealt for, and the stops card games belong in that. Newmarket and Pope Joan are here already, and Snip Snap Snorum is their small fast cousin with no pots to dress.