Old maid (card game)

Black Peter is next to a quartet of the most widespread card games for kids.

The phrase " someone the buck " means to shift inconvenience, an unwelcome problem, fault or responsibility to that other person. The name Black Peter may be reminiscent of a contemporary and companion of Schinderhannes, the robber Johann Peter Petri, who was also known under the name of "the old Black Peter" or "Black Peter" and the game is said to have invented in his prison years from 1811 onwards; the origin of the game, however, is most likely older ( see below).

The rules

Black Peter - games usually consist of 31 or 37 cards, namely the buck and 15 or 18 pairs of cards. Instead of special playing cards but you can just as well use a package of traditional cards with a joker. At the game as many players can participate, but at least two. The cards are shuffled and evenly distributed to the players. Find a player in his paper a couple, that is, two cards with the same corner signs, so he puts them immediately.

Now the drawing cards begins: The youngest child, or the child who holds most of the cards, or the player left of the dealer draws now from the leaf of its left neighbor a card and puts it on his sheet. Can he make a pair with this card, he discards it. Next is the left neighbor of the series and plays in the same way. In this way, the game sets continues until all pairs placed and a player remains as the only card of Black Peter in his hand. This player is Black Peter and receive the agreed " punishment " such as a black dot on forehead, nose or cheek.

Old Maid and Vieux Garçon

The origin of Black Peter is probably in Old Maid (English Spinster ) or Vieux garçon (French Old boy ) or English to search Jackass, a simple game of chance in which the objective is to determine a loser, the next round of drinks pay (cf. drinking game ).

One uses a packet to 32 sheets of French cards and removed from Old Maid at the Queen of Hearts or at Vieux garcon or a Jackass boys mixed in, then pull it off and the cards evenly among the players. Has a player or more pairs, eg two sevens or two kings, so he puts them open. If a player has three cards of the same rank, he may discard two of them. The colors are irrelevant. The game is played like Old Maid. The player who is last left with a single lady or a single boy, is the Old Maid and the Vieux garcon or Jackass and must pay the next drink.

Name in other countries

Italian children play Asinello ( donkey ). In Sweden, the game is called Svarte Petter, in the Netherlands it is known as Zwarte Piet. This is there the same time the name of the helper of St. Nicholas, like Krampus or Knecht Ruprecht in Germany.

Other meanings

• Black Peter is the title of an opera by Henry Traulsen, Wilhelm Wisser, Walter and Norbert Schultze Lieck for a Low German fairy tale.
• Under the name of "Black Peter" there are also books, poems, fairy tales, a musical, drinks, cakes, pies, restaurants and clubs.
• Furthermore, registered trademarks for the mark classes 30 to 34 (fruit and vegetables, biscuits and confectionery, cocoa and cocoa products, alcoholic beverages, beer, cigarettes, fine cut tobacco and pipe tobacco ), as well as for the buck exist wax shoe polish in Germany.
• The CSU politician Peter Gauweiler referred to sometimes self-deprecating as "Black Peter".
• Black Peter is the title of a Czechoslovak feature film by Miloš Forman in 1964.
• In business, there is a bargaining agent of the attacking negotiator, the person opposite the buck blaming, so he falls into a defensive role.
• If the church like their buck and its related worries someone wants to push other things, the Rewe phrase is common, she had this black Peters gets rid of ( in English bad apple ) when the intentioned pastor ceases to be employed in a diocese.