Nerd Pride Radio

You know what I love?

Cribbage.

You know what no one that lives near me cares for?

Cribbage.

Yes. It's a weird, esoteric card game that involves a peg board for keeping score. And yes, I only first became interested in it because Stephen King talks about it at least once in every book. But you know what? This game is awesome. The right mix of luck and skill, and something that you have to intently pay attention to.

Well Cribbage with Grandpas has reignited my love for cribbage. The app lets you create, name and personalize multiple grandpas with different skill levels and personality traits. Then you play cribbage against them.

It. Is. Delightful.

I have it on iphone, where it cost $2.99, which is well worth the price considering the hours I've already gotten out of it (and many more to come). Do yourself a favor. Learn cribbage. Then play it against fictional grandpas. You won't be sorry.

I love cribbage.

Then you should get the app. It's better than Candy Crush.

Okay. As soon as I finish Candy Crush.

I love Cribbage!

I love it too but would rather play with a Grandma. Just saying. Unless it's my dad we're talking about. Or my grandpas, really - I don't know what that would be like, maybe another plane, or in the afterlife, or whatever, but I've played some cribbage with my parents. Can we join up and play with Kyle?

I designed my first grandpa without putting too much thought into it. But he's awesome. Poppy and I are tied 1 to 1.

Unfortunately there's no online option.

Okay, Poppy is a little grumpy, so I made Belo, my kindly latino grandpa, and he's so encouraging. I know it's just a setting in a phone app, but it it makes such a difference when he's complimenting my skills. I like Belo.

I feel like it's not a real Grandpa if he doesn't beat you every time, and then smile sheepishly and say, stiff upper lip! Get Smart

now that I realize you can make your own grandpa I'm going to have to download this app darn it!

This thread, but cribbage instead of Matlock:

The important part is that he kicks my ass most of the time. I'm winning 2 to 1 on the medium difficulty, but when I crank it up to 4, I lost 5 in a row and FINALLY beat him 121-120 on my last game.

I need practice.

So Hardwood Walter kept kicking my ass- consistently. I'd win one game, then he'd win two. Then I realized that I kept making desperate plays to try to get big scores so I could skunk Walter. But of course that doesn't work and that's why he was beating me. So I deleted him (RIP Grandpa Walter) and created Hardcore Henry at the same difficulty level:



With a clean slate, I decided to play smart and not make risky moves. Always play the points and the odds. Now I'm kicking his ass on the regular.

Yeah. I'm just about ready to turn up the difficulty again.

This got me wanting to play cribbage but I'm cheap, so I didn't want to Shell out the $3 for a grandpa. Instead I found one called Cribbage Classic which analyzes your play and lets you know if you've made any inefficient moves during different phases. If you'd ever like to use the analysis feature or if there are other cheap people like me, I found this was a good option.

When I first started with Belo (difficulty 4), my kindly grandpa, he got about 6 or 7 games ahead of me. But I finally got better, and pulled ahead of him at about 37-37 and started beating him more often than not.

So I've created Boozer, my cantankerous, sore-loser grandpa at max difficulty and he's really upped my game.



On the other hand, more important than winning for me is simply avoiding Muggins. Nothing in this game infuriates me more than Boozer calling Muggins on me. It's not even fair... Boozer's a computer. He can call Muggins on me when I screw up, but he never makes mistakes, so I can't reciprocate. Stupid Muggins.

I'm running even with Impossible Igor (my hardest setting Grandpa) but I don't have muggins turned on. That's the next step in my progression. So he never misses a point on hardest level?

Never.

And, I'm less than even. My score above looks good, but now I'm sitting at 10-20.