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All the boiling hot, humid days where we live have forced us to spend more time than usual inside. We’ve read, we’ve taken siestas, but mostly we’ve stayed inside and played games.

We dusted off the Scrabble game and ordered a current Scrabble dictionary. You can read the blog about Scrabble and the Heat here. Our games are challenging and competitive  The outcome often depends upon who draws the Q, Z, or J tile. Our vocabularies have grown.

Wanting a game to challenged our math skills, we rediscovered Cribbage. Our granddaughter taught us years ago but we’d forgotten the details and we didn’t have a game in our game cabinet stash.

We ordered a Cribbage board from Amazon. While we awaited its arrival, we learned about the game and watched how to play it on YouTube videos. The game seemed complicated, but we did agree that we needed a challenge.

The history of Cribbage is fascinating. The game has been around since the 1600s and the way it is played has not changed. Charles Dickens’s description in The Old Curiosity Shop helped with its popularity in Victorian England. The game is played worldwide now.

We also learned Cribbage is a favorite on American submarines. The O’Kane Cribbage board of Rear Admiral Dick O’Kane is carried aboard the oldest active submarine of the United States Pacific Fleet.

Cribbage vocabulary is even more fun than its history.

Hands consist of a deal, the play, and the show. You earn points for pairs, runs, and straights until the play totals thirty-one or a player plays his last card. Points of 15 or 31 are scored with pegs on the snake-like board design called streets. Games are played to 121. All the adding and analyzing is great for our brains.

Cards are cut to decide who deals the six cards. You discard two cards from your hand for your crib.

The unused card pile is cut again and the top card is used to total points for a hand, and if it’s a Jack, the dealer scores two points for his heels or his nibs.

Then you have your muggings and Lindbergh’s, and always a pone or opponent.

Cribbage has a non-profit organization The American Cribbage Congress, dedicated to making the game fun and fair for people of all ages.

And best of all, the fast-playing game keeps us entertained on hot days.

I’m thinking it’ll work as well on chilly winter days too.