Cribbage

Cribbage, a game at cards, probably of English origin. It does not appear in foreign treatises on games, and in the Academy of Play (1768), translated from the French, cribbage is called an English game. Cribbage is played with a pack of fifty-two cards; the scores accrue in consequence of certain combinations in play, hand, and crib (for an account of which see any treatise on the game). The scores are marked on a cribbage board pierced with holes. Cribbage was formerly called noddy. It is mentioned under that name in an epigram by Sir John Harrington (1615). Nares (Glossary) says noddy was not played with a board; but Gayton (Festivous Notes upon Don Quixot, 1654) speaks of noddy-boards. The earliest description of the game is in The Compleat Gamesster (1674). Under cribbage it is stated that the game was sixty-one, 'set up with counters;' and that knave-noddy is one in hand and two to the dealer—i.e. if turned up. In 1791 Anthony Pasquin (pseudonym) published a treatise on the game of cribbage; and in 1800 cribbage was added to revised editions of Hoyle's Games. The most comprehensive work on the game is Walker's Cribbage Player's Handbook, long out of print, but republished in great part in Bohn's Handbook of Games.