Pan
Twenty-four cards on one pile. Play as high or higher, or pick up three. Don’t spell P-A-N. 2–6 players.
How to play Pan
- 1A shedding game from Poland and its neighbours, played with 24 cards: nine, ten, jack, queen, king and ace in each suit. Aces are high and suits don’t matter. The cards are dealt out as evenly as they go.
- 2Whoever holds the nine of hearts starts the pile with it. If they also hold the other three nines, they may put those down with it.
- 3On your turn, add to the pile: one card as high as the top card or higher, three cards of the same rank as the top card, or four of a kind higher than the top card.
- 4Instead of playing, you may pick up the top 3 cards of the pile (or all of them above the nine of hearts, if there are fewer). If you can’t play, you must. The nine of hearts never leaves the pile.
- 5Run out of cards and you’re out of the round. When only one player still holds cards, they get one last turn: if they can play every card they hold, nobody loses the round. Otherwise they take a letter.
- 6A round still going after 600 moves stops there: whoever holds the most cards takes the letter (nobody does if that’s a tie).
- 7Letters spell PAN. The game ends when someone has all three. Whoever has the fewest letters wins.
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