Cribbage — or "crib" as you likely call it — has been around for approximately 400 years, invented in England in the 1630s .
The story is colorful:
- The inventor was Sir John Suckling (1609–1641), an English poet, courtier, and notorious gambler . He didn't create the game from scratch — he adapted an earlier Tudor card game called Noddy (first recorded in 1589), adding the key innovation of the crib — the extra hand dealt face-down that gives the game its name
- The man himself was famously a cheat — he reportedly had marked cards printed and sent to friends across England, then toured the country "teaching" them cribbage while winning thousands of pounds
- The cribbage board actually predates the game itself, having been used for scoring other pub games long before Suckling invented crib
- How it spread — British sailors carried it across the Atlantic in the 1600s, where it caught on strongly in New England. It became especially beloved among military men — American submariners in WWII made it a near-official pastime, and the oldest submarine in the US fleet still carries Admiral Dick O'Kane's personal cribbage board
What's remarkable is how little the game has changed. Cribbage is one of the oldest card games still played in essentially its original form, nearly four centuries later . Younger than chess by about 1,100 years, but older than most games people play today.
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- https://www.cribbageking.com/post/the-history-of-cribbage
- https://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Cribbage.htm
- https://mvhm.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/THE-HISTORY-OF-CRIBBAGE-Latest-1.pdf
- https://rarepike.com/cribbage/history/
- https://www.duluthpack.com/blogs/the-history-of-the-game-of-cribbage-and-how-to-play/
- https://cribbagecorner.com/origins/
- https://medium.com/@jacob_59638/the-history-and-evolution-of-cribbage-7a3e89f21aab
- https://www.houseofcribbage.com/cribbage_history_rules.php
- https://woodchart.com/blogs/news/the-history-of-cribbage-a-game-that-brings-people-together
- https://www.mebondbooks.com/2016/01/06/history-of-cribbage/
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