• A specific card is removed, typically any
Queen card, e.g. Queen of Hearts. • A
joker is added to the pack. This card acts as the Old Maid. • A card is removed from the pack at random. The resulting unmatchable card, the Old Maid, cannot be identified as easily. • The suit colours of a discarded pair must match: with ; with . • Players discard only after the dealer has taken a card. • Players take a new card before giving one up. This can result in a player being stuck in "old maid purgatory", i.e. with one card and no way to get rid of it.
Merry Matches "Merry Matches", a proprietary card game by Wyman & Sons of London, appeared in 1883. It was originally published as a black-and-white game, but a coloured version appeared in 1884. There were 31 cards, the pairs "to be wed" including:
Tommy Tucker and
Goody Two-Shoes,
Little Jack Horner and
Miss Muffet,
Father Christmas and Mrs Bond,
Jack and Jill,
Little Boy Blue and
Little Bo Peep, the Prince and
Cinderella,
Dr Faustus and Dame Darden,
The Man all tattered and torn and
The Maiden all forlorn,
Simple Simon and
Lucy Locket,
Father William and
Old Mother Hubbard,
Little Red Riding Hood and
Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son. The odd card was
Mistress Mary. The aims were threefold: to wed as many couples as possible, to make a match between Father Christmas and Mrs Bond, and to avoid being left with Mistress Mary, the penalty for which was to give every other player 2 counters. The player who weds Father Christmas with Mrs Bond sweeps the pool and those making matches during the game receive "wedding presents" of 1 counter from each other player. Scabby Queen is recorded in 2002 as a game played in
Perthshire, Scotland, but also known as Raps in
Derbyshire, Raps or Chase the Bitch in
Staffordshire, and Executioner in
Hampshire. In some parts of Britain, it is called Chase the Ace, but that is also the name of a
different game.
Black Peter The equivalent game in many European countries is known (in each country's own language) as "Peter" or "
Black Peter", and is often played with special cards, typically 31 or 37, in which the odd one out is typically a chimney sweep or a black cat. The game can also be played with a standard 32-card pack from which a black jack is removed. The loser often gets a smudge on his or her face with a piece of soot or piece of burnt cork.
Regional variants •
Trinidad:
Jackass. The is removed leaving the as the odd card. The player left holding it is the "jackass". •
Turkey: ("Priest eloped"). As Old Maid, but
king is removed instead of
queen or
knave. ==See also==