How to play

Get rid of your cards — you don't need to win tricks, but you want to play a card in every trick.

Cards: green, yellow, orange and blue, numbered from 2, plus wild 1s. Each player gets 12 (11 with 8 players).

Tricks: the leader plays any card; everyone else must follow the lead colour if they can, otherwise play any colour. A wild 1 may always be played and counts as the lowest card of the lead colour. The highest card of the lead colour wins and leads the next trick.

The Fool! Whoever played the worst card takes the Fool! disc and sits out the next trick. If everyone followed, the worst is the lowest card; if anyone played another colour, the lowest of those off-colour cards is worst (on a tie, the later one). With 7 or 8 players the two worst both become Fools.

Scoring: the hand ends after someone plays their last card. Going out scores +10 — unless you became the Fool on that last trick (then 0). Everyone else loses the value of the cards left in hand (each wild 1 is −5).

The game ends when someone reaches −80, or after six +10s have been scored. Most points wins. The player with the most negative points starts each new hand.

Fool! is by Friedemann Friese. The card art here is our own, drawn in the spirit of the game.