DID YOU KNOW
Authors is a classic card game dating back to 1861 and was first published by G. M. Whipple & A. A. Smith of Salem, Massachusetts. The deck could also be used for many traditional card games because the cards also had standard indices in both the upper and lower corners.
The game was the creation of Anne Abbott, a magazine editor, literary reviewer, author and game designer from Beverly, MA. The cities are separated by the Danvers River and Beverly Harbour.
Down here in the Antipodes, we’re just weeks away from Christmas and Go Fish is one of those simple card games generally played among family members during the holiday period. It is possibly the best-known variant of the Authors game and one of the first card games that many children learn to play.
On the Shoulders of Giants
In the Latin, ‘nanos gigantum humeris insidentes’ expresses the sense of building on previous discoveries. Contextually, the original Authors deck included 52 cards featuring colour portraits of 13 time-honoured Writers with lists of their four greatest literary works. The aim of the game was to collect complete books by calling for cards from other players.
The Authors game featured: Louise May Alcott, James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Henry Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Walter Scott, William Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred Tennyson, William Thackeray and Mark Twain.
In Go Fish, when asking another player for a card from their hand, the responding player could give the ‘fisher’ either ALL 3 cards or only ONE of them. The winner was declared in one of two ways, when a player ran out of cards first OR a player had the most number of books. Photo Credit: Mike Peters/Mother Goose and Grimm
OFF the WALL
Dark Horse Digital is a two-person, bootstrapped Start Up. It began in 2013 embodying the trans-Tasman spirit of its founders: of mateship, ingenuity and endurance. Off the Wall are some fair dinkum fascinations shared with our Facebook Followers.
Our BAM! Card Game
