Yeah, I have his Oxford Dictionary of Card Games which is what I was using as a reference. In this book, he just calls noddy an ancestor and costly colors a “fascinating relative” of cribbage. I can see cribbage being seen as a refinement of costly colors, or costly colors being an elaboration of cribbage.
Parlett has two other books on cards which are interesting…one of which, A History of Card Games, is just about game origins. I really should have tried to talk to him when I lived in Oxford.
I’m going to have to pick that up. His Oxford Dictionary is my favorite general book on card games.
This would imply that cribbage is sane, relatively speaking.
Are we talking the same Cribbage here?
That being said, I wouldn’t change Crib a bit, It moves me closer to center in the big picture of “Normal”.
Some decks do. You can buy decks where diamonds are orange and clubs are blue or green. This is helpful for two demographics:
- poker players (online) who are playing a ton of games simultaneously and don’t want to waste time or potentially confuse one card for another. It also makes finding flushes much faster and easier.
- nearly blind bridge players.
I’ve also used an Uno deck for regular card games. And vice versa–using two regulra decks with jokers to play Uno.
Oh, you, cribbage isn’t that crazy. I’ve taught it to people in like ten minutes. It’s a lot easier to teach than a lot of those contract games (like bridge, tarock, ulti, pinochle, skat, etc.) Now, grasping the subtlety of cribbage and how to best play cribs while taking into account your board pegging position, intuiting your opponent’s cards, etc., that takes a long time. Forever, I’d say. But that’s like most any game.