Play Larch Hollow Spades

How to play Larch Hollow Spades

Classic partnership Spades in a potting shed after dark. Bid your tricks with Constance the pine marten as your partner, make the contract, and keep an eye on the bags.

1. Press Play. Everyone gets 13 cards. Yours sit along the bottom, sorted by suit with the spades on the right. Cornelius sits on your left, Constance across the bench as your partner and Agatha on your right, each holding a fan of face-down cards.
2. Bidding: starting on the dealer’s left, everyone bids once, the number of tricks they expect to take. On your turn, step your bid up or down and tap Bid, or tap Nil to promise no tricks at all. Your side’s contract is your bid plus Constance’s.
3. Tricks: the player on the dealer’s left leads first. Everyone must follow suit if they can; a player who cannot may trump with a spade or throw any card. The highest spade wins the trick, or the highest card of the suit led if no spade was played. The winner leads next. Tap a card to pick it and tap it again to play it.
4. Spades cannot be led until a spade has been played on an earlier trick (spades are broken), unless the leader holds nothing but spades.
5. Scoring: a side that makes its contract scores 10 a trick bid, and each trick over is a bag worth 1 point. A side that falls short loses 10 a trick bid. A nil scores 100 if the bidder takes no tricks and loses 100 if they take any. Every time a side’s bags reach 10, it loses 100 points.
6. The game ends after a hand in which a side reaches 500. The higher score wins. If the sides are level, another hand is played.

Controls

• Touch or mouse: when it is your bid, tap minus or plus to set the number of tricks and tap Bid, or tap Nil. In play, tap a card to pick it up and tap it again to play it, or switch to playing on one tap in Settings. After a hand, tap Next hand. Undo, Hint, Last trick and Menu sit on the shelf below the bench, or beside it on a landscape phone. Tap the score board for the score sheet.
• Keyboard: while you bid, the up and down arrows or plus and minus change your bid and B bids it. In play, the arrow keys move along your hand and Enter or Space picks or plays the card in focus. N deals the next hand, S opens the score sheet, L shows the last trick, U undoes, H shows a hint and Escape clears a pick.
• Restart in the toolbar starts a new game. Menu starts a new game, opens the score sheet, changes the table’s level, the game length, the spade and blind nil rules, how you play a card and the table’s speed in Settings, and shows your statistics and the rules. The toolbar also has pause, help, optional sound and fullscreen.