The gameplay behind Spoons and Giant Spoons have been around for awhile. This includes a number of other games with different names, but are played the same. In fact you can play the game with a standard deck of cards, and objects that the players have to grab. Because of this a number of variant and house rules have been created for the game. I will begin with the most popular rules for the game, and will then discuss some of the variant/house rules for the game.
Looking for specific Spoons rules? | Setup | Playing the Game | Grabbing a Spoon | Winning the Game | Variant Rules |
Setup
- Place a number of spoons on the table equal to the number of players minus one. For example there are five players. You will place four spoons on the table.
- Choose a player to be the first dealer. This role rotates throughout the game. The dealer shuffles all of the cards.
- The dealer then deals four cards to each player including themselves. Players can look at their cards and arrange them however they want. The dealer then places the rest of the cards facedown in front of themselves.
How to Play Spoons
When everyone is ready, the dealer draws the top card from the pile of cards in front of themselves. They will look at the card and will decide what they want to do with it.
If they don’t want the card that they just drew, they will take the card and pass it face down to the player on their left.
Should the dealer want to keep the card, they will add it to their hand. They then must choose one card from their hand to discard. They will place the card face down in front of the player to their left.
In either case the dealer then draws the next card from the pile in front of them.
While the dealer is drawing cards and choosing what they want to do with them, the rest of the players will look at the cards discarded in front of them to see if they want them. They will look at one card at a time. Just like the dealer they can either discard the card, or swap it for another card in their hand. They will discard one card to the player on their left. All of the players play at the same time. You can pick up and discard cards as quickly as you want.
The player to the right of the dealer creates a discard pile next to the dealer. Once the dealer has gone through all of the cards from the draw pile, they will take cards from this discard pile.
Grabbing A Spoon
When any of the players have four cards in their hand that are the same number/face card, they will grab one of the spoons from the middle of the table. The player can choose to grab the spoon quickly likely alerting the other players, or they can slowly grab the spoon to not alert the other players.
Players should always keep track of the spoons in the middle of the table. Once a spoon has been taken, all of the other players should race to grab a spoon.
Whichever player is unable to grab a spoon, is eliminated from the game.
You will then play another round. Since there is one less player in the game, remove one of the spoons from the table. A new player becomes the dealer. All of the cards are shuffled to create the deck for the next round.
Winning the Game
You will keep playing rounds until only one player remains. The last remaining player wins the game.
Variant Rules
Here are some additional variant/house rules that have been created for Spoons over the years.
In the normal rules you are eliminated if you are unable to grab a spoon at the end of the round. You could choose to play the game where each player gets three strikes before they are eliminated. Every round where you fail to grab a spoon, you receive a strike. After you have received three strikes, you are eliminated from the game.
The rules don’t specifically mention what happens when you are the first to grab a spoon, but don’t have four of a kind. The rules only specifically say that you grab the first spoon after you get four of a kind. To discourage players from grabbing spoons before they have four of a kind, I would play it where if you grab a spoon early you are eliminated from the game/receive a strike.
There is a variant rule that some people use where you can fake grabbing a spoon without actually touching one. You may do this to try and get another player to grab a spoon when they can’t. This would eliminate them from the game.
Components
- Standard Deck of 52 Playing Cards
- 7 Spoons
- Instructions
Year: 1972 | Publisher: Patch Products, PlayMonster, Public Domain | Designer: Michael Ferch
Genres: Card, Family, Speed
Ages: 7+ | Number of Players: 3-8 | Length of Game: 20-30 minutes
Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: High
For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.