On Sat, 03 Aug 2013 19:06:05 -0400, Roy Smith wrote: > In article <51fd8635$0$30000$c3e8da3$54964...@news.astraweb.com>, > Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > >> 2) Then go through those initial letters, and pick out the ones equal >> to 4 (or should that be "four or more"?). > > Assuming my earlier hunch is correct about these being cards in a deck, > and the a's being aces, I would hope it's not "four or more". See my > earlier comment about saloons and gunshot wounds.
There are card games that involve more than four suits, or more than one pack. In principle, if you draw ten cards from an unknown number of packs, you could draw ten Aces, or even ten Aces of the same suit. Think of playing blackjack with ten packs shuffled together. Cripple Mr Onion, for example, uses hands of ten cards drawn from eight suits: http://discworld.wikia.com/wiki/Cripple_Mr_Onion (yes, it's a real game, based on a fictional game) The Indian Ganjifa deck uses ten "houses" (decks) of 12 cards each. Pinochle uses the standard four Western suits, but uses two copies of each card 9, 10, J, Q, K, A, for 48 cards in total. Sometimes people combine two pinochle decks for larger games, so with a double deck all ten cards could be Aces. In the 1930s, there was a fad for playing Bridge with a fifth suit, coloured green, called Royals, Leaves, Eagles or Rooks depending on the manufacturer. There are five- and six-suit versions of poker, with at least two still commercially available: the five-suit Stardeck pack (which adds Stars), and the six-suit Empire deck (which adds red Crowns and black Anchors). There is an eight-suit Euchre pack that adds red Moons, black Stars, red four-leaf Clovers and black Tears to the standard deck. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
