1998 · Card Game

Zero Down

Players try to minimize their score by assembling low-value sets from a shared tableau and a private hand. The deck has numbered, colored cards; each player starts with nine cards and several cards are placed face-up on the table. On a turn a player either knocks to signal passing or swaps one card from their hand with one face-up card. After the table has been knocked twice, each non-knocking player gets one final swap before all hands are revealed and scored. Five or more cards of the same color or of the same number in hand score zero; other cards score their face value. If a player forms both a five-card color set and a five-card number set simultaneously they immediately end the round with a “Zero” declaration. The game ends after a number of rounds equal to the player count; the lowest total score wins.

groupPlayers

2–5 best 4

schedulePlaying time

20 min

cakeAge

8+

psychologyComplexity

1.2 / 5