Pass cards until someone has four alike, then grab before the spoons run out.
A game of passing cards and physical scrambling, and one of the few card games where the cards are almost incidental.
A 52-card deck, and spoons — one fewer than the number of players. Put them in a circle in the middle of the table within everyone's reach.
Four cards to each player from a full 52-card deck. The dealer keeps what is left face down beside them, and that is the stock they draw from.
Some tables use only four cards of one rank per player — with five players, the aces, kings, queens, jacks and tens. That deals every card out and leaves no stock, so the cards go round a closed circle instead of down a line and every hand is one card from four of a kind. It is the faster game and worth knowing, but it is not the one described below.
There are no turns. Everyone plays continuously.
The dealer draws from the remaining stock, keeps or rejects a card, and passes one face down to the player on their left. Every player does the same: take the card passed to you, keep it or pass it on, and always end up holding four cards.
Cards accumulate in a discard pile beside the last player in the circle.
As soon as you hold four of a kind, take a spoon from the middle. You may do it openly or sneakily.
The moment anyone takes a spoon, everyone else may take one too. One player will be left without.
The player without a spoon takes a letter — S, then P, then O — and spells out SPOONS over successive rounds. Spell the whole word and you are out.
Remove one spoon each time a player is eliminated. The last player left wins.
Half the game is watching for someone quietly sliding a spoon off the table without saying anything.