Spoons

Spoons is played here by four players, you against three computer players, West, North and East, with a full 52-card pack. Everyone is dealt four cards, and the rest of the pack is the dealer's stock. In the middle are three spoons: one fewer than there are players.

• There are no turns: everyone passes at once, as fast as they like, one card at a time. Pick up the card passed to you from your right, then pass one card face down to your left. The dealer picks up from the stock instead.
• You can never hold more than five cards: four, plus the one you've just picked up. The player on the dealer's right passes onto a discard pile, and when the stock runs out the discards become the new stock.
• Collect four cards of the same rank and you may take a spoon.
• As soon as any spoon has been taken, everyone may grab one, with or without four of a kind. The player left without a spoon loses the deal.
• Each player has three lives. Lose three deals and you're out, and a spoon is taken away. The winner of each deal, the first to take a spoon, deals the next.
• With two players left there's one spoon, and whoever collects four of a kind first wins. The last player in wins the game.

• When a card reaches you, your hand shows five cards, the new one highlighted. Tap one, or press 1 to 5, to pass it to your left.
• To take a spoon, tap one, or press Space. You can only take the first spoon with four of a kind.
• CPU speed (practice games only) sets how quickly the computer players pass and grab: Slow, Normal or Fast. The daily game is always Normal.

• Daily: everyone gets the same deals each day.
• New Game: a fresh game with new deals.

You score 100 for each deal you don't lose, 150 for each four of a kind you take a spoon with, and 500 more if you win the game.

• Pick one rank to collect and pass everything else, quickly. Speed matters more than the perfect choice.
• Keep one eye on the spoons. The moment one goes, grab.
• When you're the dealer you never have to wait for a card, so pass fast and make the most of it.

Spoons is a version of Pig, a simple collecting game for three to thirteen players that Wikipedia dates to early 20th-century America and describes as often classed as a children's game. In Pig, the first player to collect four of a kind touches their nose and the last to copy them loses. In Spoons there's a pile of spoons, one fewer than the players, to grab instead. According to Wikipedia, the name Spoons first appears in 1990, though a version called Spoof, played with 'empty thread spools or spoons', was described as early as 1946. Wikipedia also says, citing Richard L. Frey, that Pig may descend from an older game, Vive l'Amour, whose rules first appear in 1821. The rules here follow pagat.com's description of Spoons played with a stock pile, written in our own words, with three lives each, one of the two ways pagat gives of ending a series. One difference: pagat has you pass a card before you pick one up, so you never hold more than four; here you pick up first and then pass, choosing from five.

Spoons is a free browser version of the classic grab-a-spoon card game, played against three computer players at the speed you choose, with a daily game and online leaderboards. There's nothing to download and no sign-up.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.