House of cards (skill game)
A house of cards is built from playing cards , beer mats or dominoes and is a very unstable structure.
history
A cultural history of the building of cards is not known. But the saying that something collapses like a house of cards has been used since the 19th century . It is believed to have been created to help children spend time at family celebrations, christenings, or weddings while the adults talked after dinner.
Houses of cards are built to pass the time or to practice concentration. Some psychological and motor-oriented tests for preschoolers include building a house of cards. If the house of cards does not collapse when it is set up, you can take turns trying to remove cards from the house of cards. For example, in the case of the small house of cards (see the construction section ) you can probably remove one of the two lower cards in the middle without it collapsing.
On November 6, 1999, Bryan Berg beat his own world record for the highest house of cards in Berlin: his new record consists of a 7.71 meter high house with 91,800 cards on 131 floors.
construction
1.) First, two cards are leaned against each other:
/\ / \
2.) Then two more cards are placed on it, which are also leaned against each other:
/\ /\ / \/ \
3.) The gap is bridged horizontally with a card:
---- /\ /\ / \/ \
4.) On the platform created in this way, two cards are placed as described under 1.):
/\ / \ ---- /\ /\ / \/ \
Calculation of the number of cards
With this typical structure of a house of cards, two cards for the base, three cards for expansion per previous floor and three cards for the top floor are required for each additional floor. So more cards are required, where n represents the number of the new floor, that is, cards are required for building a house of cards with floors . The value of this sum is . So you can build floors
with cards .
The game for two or more people
Building a house of cards can also be played as a game of skill for two or more people: as soon as it is their turn, each player must add two cards to the house of cards.
It is built until the house collapses or all cards are used up. If the card package is completely used up, the players in turn have to remove two cards. - The player whose action the house collapses has lost.
Phrase
The phrase it collapsed (or will collapse ) like a house of cards means that a cause or hope will suddenly be ruined or come to a dangerous end .
The house of cards in literature
The house of cards in literature is a poetic image of frailty, a topos that is particularly popular in the literature of Sturm und Drang, for example in Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's drama “Sturm und Drang”, and also in Gotter, Johann Wolfgang by Goethe and Friedrich Schiller .
