Download Printable Instructions and the Scoring Sheet
This download includes a full history guide, instructions, and research notes. It’s a sample of the guides we give out as part of our activities for patrons.
Thank you so much for taking time to attend the conference and hear about my presentation on Noddy. It was so great to share this history with you and I hope you enjoy playing the game as much as I do.
You can download the instructions for how to play and the scoring sheet using the form above.
If you’re interested in using this activity in your classroom, I do have a complete activity kit available for my patrons where you can watch a video tutorial on how to play, download detailed history notes about the game, and see coordinating podcast episodes so you can learn from the world’s leading experts while you play.
If you play it at home, be sure to share the fun with me @ThatShakespeare on Twitter.
Thank you again! I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference and thank you again for coming to my talk today.
P.S. You can email me directly using cassidy at cassidycash dot com if you have questions or want to connect. I would love to hear from you! I respond personally to all my emails from the SAA conference. Just put “SAA” somewhere in the subject line so I know it’s you 🙂
Become a Patron at the Activity Kit Level to get a full activity kit sent to you each month.
16th Century French Playing Cards | From MacGregor Games
$6.00 USD
Bicycle Montague Vs. Capulet Playing Cards
$9.95 USD
Shakespeare Quotes Playing Cards
$10.07 USD
Hi. In your video, you said the NonDealer gets 3 points called the “Compassion points” for not getting the crib, but only for the first round, which ends when 31 points are scored in play.
How many points do we play to in order to win the game?
Hello JoyLynn! I’m so glad you’re playing this game! It’s a bit tricky to learn, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a fun game to play. This question you are asking about can be confusing because there is a difference between card “value” and “points earned” by a player. Let me see if I can explain ( I tried to explain in the video but sometimes reading about it helps.) As you play, you are calculating card values up to 31. Once a value of 31 is shown on the cards that have been played, then that round is complete.
How many points each player earned in that round depends on the combination of face cards vs number cards you played. Various combinations have different defined values as a group (As shown in the video, a string of cards whose value totals 25 is worth 1 point to the player for each card it took to get to a value of 25. That’s why Elliot in this video earns 6 points for the cards in the crib. Their value was 25, and it took 6 cards to get to 25, so he earns 6 points). As shown in the video, Round 1 ends once a value of 31 is reached by the cards played. Because Elliot laid the card that caused the value of cards shown to equal 31, his play ends the round. They total up the points for each player and write it down (Most authentically, players would have used pegs on a Cribbage type board to tally points but a piece of paper works fine). Since that round is over, the cards get reshuffled and the players play another round. Rounds continue until one player earns a total of 31 points. When they earn a total of 31 points, they win the entire game.
So there’s two places in the game progress where adding up to 31 matters. Firstly, you add cards up to 31 as part of the round, then you have a second set of points that have to equal 31 to win the game overall.
There is a written guide for how this game works, including a table of how the combinations of cards are valued (with more examples of how to count up to 31), and examples of hands and how to count them, in the written instruction guide for How To Play Noddy. You can download the instructions part of this guide for free by signing up for our weekly email newsletter using the form on this page. The full history guide to the game, including more details, is inside the activity kit we sell for this game activity. You can access this kit as a subscriber to our digital history activity kits (http://www.cassidycash.com/experience)
If you are one of our Noble Patrons on Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/thatshakespearelife) or you are a regular subscriber to our activity kits –both monthly and annual (http://www.cassidycash.com/experience), you get access to our support team included in your subscription where you can email us to request an additional video tutorial for support and more detailed explanations.