Thievery.co.uk
Work out everyone else’s hidden cards before they work out yours. For 2 to 12 players, or play against bots.
What the table calls you. Up to 20 characters.
How to play
- Sort your hand. You’re dealt a row of cards. Put them in order, lowest to highest, and lock in. Then every row on the table turns face down.
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Read the table. Everyone can see each card’s colour
and position, but only you know your own ranks. Because every row
is in order, a hidden card has to fit between its neighbours.
Red cards lie sideways and black ones stand up. The hidden black card is between a 4 and a 7, so it can only be a 4, 5, 6 or 7. - Guess. On your turn, pick someone else’s hidden card and name its rank. Get it right and it flips face up, and you go again. Get it wrong and the turn passes. Flip all of everyone else’s cards to win.
Full rules
The deal
The deck is 26 cards: Ace to King in one red suit and Ace to King in one black suit. They’re dealt into three, four, five or six hands, as evenly as possible. There’s no draw pile, so every card is in somebody’s row from start to finish.
The first players to join take a hand each. After that, new players share a hand with someone already seated: both see the same cards, and either can play it on their turn. Two to a hand at most, so six hands seat up to twelve people.
Empty hands can be given to bots, so one or two of you can still play a full table. There are three levels: Novice only goes by colour, Sharp reads the row, and Ruthless counts the whole table. Bots can’t see any more of your cards than anyone else can, and give up their seat as soon as a person wants it.
Sorting your hand
You’re dealt your cards face up, and only you can see them. Drag them into ascending order (ace low) and press Lock in. Two cards of the same rank can go either way round, and an ace is wild: you can put it anywhere in the row.
Once everyone has locked in, every row turns face down at once. Red cards lie sideways and black cards stand upright, so everyone knows the colour and position of every card, but only you know the ranks of yours.
Reading the table
Because every row is in order, a hidden card is fenced in by its neighbours. Colour narrows it further: there’s exactly one 9 of each colour, so once the black 9 has been flipped anywhere, no other black card can be a 9. Every flip gives everybody more to go on, including the person who made it.
Taking your turn
Click any face-down card that isn’t yours and name a rank from Ace to King.
- Right: the card flips face up for everyone, and you go again. A good run can clear out someone’s whole row in one turn.
- Wrong: nothing else happens. You don’t lose anything; the turn just passes to the next hand.
Winning
The round ends as soon as one hand has turned over every card it could guess at, meaning every card belonging to everyone else. That hand wins, and if two people share it, they both win.
Five and six hands: power-ups
The deck stays at 26 cards however many hands there are, so at six hands each row is only four or five cards long. With fewer neighbours, hidden cards are much harder to pin down, and one lucky streak can run through half the table.
So at five and six hands everyone draws a power-up at the start of each of their turns (one per turn, up to three held at once, never two of the same). Three and four hands never get them, and bots don’t draw any.
The common ones give you private information: look at one hidden card, or find out how many of a rank are still face down. The rarer ones interrupt: trip the alarm ends whatever run is going on, and anyone can use it at any time, even out of turn.
Partnerships (four hands)
A four-hand table can be played in teams: hands 1 and 3 against hands 2 and 4. You only guess at the other team’s cards, and at the start of your turn your partner can privately show you one of their face-down cards, or choose not to.