So I was watching The Office on DVD the other night, and I need a couple of translations from English Dopers.
What is Top Trumps? Is it a card game? Like, with a normal deck? Does everyone know how to play it except me? And, what is a ‘benny’? Because Gareth mentions it a couple of times - ‘you’ll make me look like a benny’ - so I figure it’s along the lines of ‘wanker’ or something, but where does it derive from? Is this that tricksey rhyming slang?
Top Trumps is a mainly children’s card game , played a bit like snap. Top Trumps
I think Benny refers to a character of that name from a very poor soap opera called “Crossroads” . He always wore a knitted ski-hat and he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the box.
Benny
According to the first Urban Dictionary entry, it’s a shortening of “bender”. I’m pretty sure those are quotes from The Office given as examples.
Considering how many different slang words there are for homosexual I don’t doubt it as a possible meaning (and it’s a very Gareth thing to say) but I’m pretty skeptical of the explanation that it’s a shortening of “bender”.
Additionally, I’ve never heard it used, but then, I don’t live anywhere near Slough, so it’s not all that surprising.
If someone called me a Benny, I would assume the version Rayne Man mentioned.
I took it to mean ‘bender’ - which I think is itself also used by Gareth at some point. (And for clarification, it’s a rather childish playground insult, that only somebody as socially-inept as Gareth would still use.)
I am English and an enthusiastic table games player and I’ve never heard of ‘top trumps’.
I am old enough to remember ‘Crossroads’ and therefore understand Rayne Man’s allusion. Even in a toolbox of blunt knives waiting to be sharpened, Benny wouldn’t have been the sharpest!
But is Gareth old enough to remember Crossroads?
Glee you wanna get yourself down to Woolies!
When I was home a few weeks ago the local Woolworths had Top Trumps for sale including a new up to date Star Wars saga version !
IMHO, speaking as a younger sister always playing against her brother, there isn’t much skill involved - but then I always lost 
What is the ‘Woolies’ of which you speak? 
Is it a misprint for ‘Wookies’?
Woolworths (ie your old 5 and 10 cents store)
You’re just teasing, aren’t you? The inimitable Woolworths chain of stores, purveyors of Top Trumps to the Stars (amongst a million and one other things).
It’s a real game of skill, you know. At least, my son consistently beats me.
Yes, but what is Top Trumps. How do you play it?
I had a version of this when I was at school in the late 1970s. It was a deck of cards, each of which described a certain ship, ranging from the QEII down to much smaller vessels. On each card there was a picture of the ship on one side and various details about the ship on the other side e.g. its maximum speed, tonnage, draught, length, passenger capacity etc. You’d deal out all of the cards among the different players. Then the first player would announce one of the factors from the first ship that he had (e.g. its length). He’d obviously choose a factor that he thought was likely to beat all of the other players’ ships. All the other players would then compare the same factor on their own first ship. The one who had the best ship would “win” that round and collect the cards from all of the other players. He’d then look at his next ship and announce a different factor and so on. The winner was the first person to collect all of the cards. As I recall, the QEII was the best one to get, because it beat all of the other ships in every category, except for draught.
How to play Top Trumps
If you want to see a (politically incorrect) top trumps game, click right here: Chav Top trumps. [PDF]
Pack of cards all on the one subject. This can be anything, but usually something small boys can be obssesive about;
-Formula One Cars
-Motorbikes
-Comicbook heros
-Star Wars Space Fighters
-Dinosaurs
-Tanks
-Football
You get the picture…
Each card features a picture of one paticular car/bike/hero/etc and has a list of quantified attributes of the above. e.g. weight, power, max speed, cup wins, number of teeth etc.
Deal the cards out. One player starts. From their top card they pick the attribute they think is most likely to beat all the others’ cards. If it does they get all the cards and repeat the process with their next card. If they are beaten control passes to the player with the winning card. Repeat until one player has all the cards.
So it’s really, really simple, but requires an encyclopedic knowledge of pointless facts about the chosen subject.
And players soon got to know the best stats on each card, so that after a while you would just say “SR71 Blackbird” or whatever and everybody would know that they couldn’t beat your Speed stat, so they would silently hand over their cards 
If anyone wants to try out Top Trumps, they can play a Doctor Who version online here.
benny meant gay when i was in school in dublin… early 90’s i suppose.
As in the classic schoolboy joke.
Schoolboy 1: Are you a benny tied to a pole?
Schoolboy 2: No!
Schoolboy 1: Ah! Benny on the loose.
I used to have horror top trumps…
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=56359&item=5204850020&rd=1
worth a couple of quid now by the looks of things… maybe they’re still at home somewhere…
And retrieved from the entirely useless collection of trivia that is my brain the following. After the Falklands war soldiers from the British garrison left on the islands to prevent a repetition found the locals unsophisticated bumpkins and called them ‘bennies’. This was officially forbidden in order to maintain good relations with the native population. So soldiers started to call them ‘stills’. As in still bennies.