Hard Telling Not Knowing each week tries to answer your burning questions about why things are the way they are in Maine — specifically about Maine culture and history, both long ago and recent, large and small, important and silly. Send your questions to [email protected].
No matter what the calendar may officially say, the summer season unofficially kicks off in Maine on Memorial Day weekend, bringing with it months of barbecues, beaches and visiting friends and family. Hopefully, that also means plenty of down time to engage in leisure activities just for the fun of it, like board games, parlor games and card games.
Whether you’re at a camp by a lake in the woods, a cottage on the ocean or a campground — or just at home, on a long, lazy summer afternoon — these are some of the classic card games that have entertained Mainers both permanent and part time for generations.
For brevity’s sake, we’re not going to list the full rules for each of the games below. You can find full rules for these games and many thousands more on gamerules.com, an online compendium of just about every type of game imaginable.
What’s your favorite card game? Sound off in the comments below, or send an email to [email protected].
Charlemagne
Folks from Aroostook County or the Maritimes may recall this venerable card game that generations have enjoyed. It is still a beloved tradition among people of French heritage in the region, and can be the cause of many friendly arguments and afternoons stretching into evenings as rematches keep piling up. Picture your grandmother absolutely destroying you, game after game after game.
Charlemagne is believed by card game enthusiasts to be a modified version of Euchre, another old-fashioned card game. It’s played with two teams of four, and the object of the game is to be the first team to get to 32 points via bidding. There’s a crucial difference between the Maine and Canadian versions of the game — in Maine, it’s played with a modified deck of 32 cards, while in Atlantic Canada it’s played with 34 cards.
Why the game is called Charlemagne isn’t known, although it is worth noting that there is a long-standing legend that the King of Hearts card in a traditional deck of cards is representative of Charlemagne, the Frankish king and emperor in the eighth and ninth centuries. The other king cards supposedly represent King David, Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great.
Cribbage
While it’s certainly not unique to Maine or New England, Mainers have a particularly avid fondness for cribbage. Visit any shop selling locally made goods and you will probably find a handmade Maine-themed cribbage board. There’s likely a cribbage board laying around at your family camp and a cribbage club somewhere near you. It’s ubiquitous.
It’s for two, three or four players, and is played through a series of hands, with each hand consisting of three parts — a deal, a play and a show. Whichever player reaches 121 points first, wins. Scores are kept by moving pegs on the cribbage board. It’s a bit complicated, but once you get the hang of it, it’s addictive. It even experienced a resurgence in Maine when people were stuck home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cribbage, which has its roots in 17th-century England, can also be played for money, often for charitable fundraisers or in tournaments. That was illegal in Maine between 2008 and 2016, after the state decided that cribbage was a form of gambling and then later passed a bill to allow 15 cribbage tournaments per year.
La Bloute
While Charlemagne is probably the most well-known card game popular among folks in Aroostook County, there’s another game called La Bloute that also has roots that go back generations. La Bloute — also known as Two Hundred, Deux Cents and Le Rough — is popular throughout French-speaking Canada and Maine.
It’s played with four players and a deck of 36 cards — a standard deck with all the 2s, 3s, 4s and 6s removed — with a goal of getting to 200 points via point values assigned to each card. As recently as 10 years ago, there were social groups in the St. John Valley that gathered weekly to play La Bloute.
Oh Pshaw
This game has seemingly hundreds of different names. In New England, it’s often called Oh Pshaw. Elsewhere, it’s called Oh Well, Oh Heck, Oh Hell, Up and Down the River, Blackout, and so on, in increasingly vulgar permutations. It’s not unique to Maine, but as with many card games, it has little regional variations wherever it’s played.
Oh Pshaw can be played with three to six players, and involves bidding on how many “tricks” you think you will make in a given round. The player with the highest score after all hands have been dealt is the winner. It can also be played as a drinking game, although we can’t officially advise that you do that.
