Competitive patience for two: race your opponent to play off a 20-card pay-off pile onto shared centre stacks, with kings wild and plenty of spite.
The game uses two standard packs shuffled together. Each player has a pay-off pile of 20 cards with the top card face up, plus a hand of five. The rest of the cards form the stock.
Up to three centre stacks can be in play at once, shared by both players. Each one starts with an ace and is built up in order to a queen. Kings are wild and can stand for any card. When a stack reaches the queen it is shuffled back into the stock.
On your turn, draw back up to five cards. Then play to the centre from your hand, from the top of your pay-off pile, or from the top of any of your side stacks. If you play all five hand cards, draw five more and carry on. End your turn by putting one card from your hand on one of your side stacks. You can have up to four, and they can hold cards in any order.
Spite and malice, also known as cat and mouse, is a relatively modern American card game. It is a reworking of the late 19th-century Continental game crapette, also known as Russian bank.
The game isn't recorded until the 1960s. An early reference, in The Santa Fe Magazine in 1963, treats it as a trend-setting game. The first rules were written down by Richard L. Frey in 1965, who called it 'a recent husband-and-wife game that in some places rivals Russian Bank in popularity'.
It had a well-deserved following in the 1970s, when the bridge expert Easley Blackwood saw it being played on a cruise ship and published its rules. A commercial variation is sold by Mattel as Skip-Bo. The rules here follow pagat.com.
Spite and Malice is a free browser version of the traditional card game, with a CPU opponent, a new daily deal every day and online leaderboards. There's nothing to download and no sign-up. Skip-Bo is a trademark of its owner, and this game is not affiliated with it or endorsed by it.