Hardy Survivor

In the grand ballroom of St. Paul's Hotel St. Paul one night last week, a pert little waitress named Katherine Butterfield sat opposite an auditor named Herbert Meddinnus. Miss Butterfield was the pone. In the second hand, she held 16. She was 20 holes ahead at the first half. In the seventh hand, she held 16 again. On the last round she was 20 holes ahead. She went out needing 10 and holding 12. Mr. Meddinnus barely got around the horn to escape a skunking by two holes.

In the second game, Miss Butterfield "kept the old soldier walking," pegged out with more than enough. Then, smiling for the first time in three days, Waitress Butterfield received in her trembling hands 100 crinkly $1 bills and a gold cup -- on which was engraved U. S. National Cribbage Champion.

Cribbage (played with cards and reckoned on a peg board) was invented by Britain's Sir John Suckling, a 17th-century gambler. He got the idea from an ancient English game called Noddy, mixed the proportions of luck (drawing cards) and skill (playing them) so piquantly that the game appealed to every Englishman's taste, soon became synonymous with a cozy fireside and a little something simmering on the hob. When English colonists went to the U. S., cribbage went along, too, sprouted wherever there were two people, a fireside and a long winter evening.

To a casual kibitzer, cribbage is as baffling as the nebular hypothesis. Even though one may know that its main object is to form various counting combinations (like Pairs, Runs, Fifteens) and register them with wooden pegs until someone gets 61 (or 121 in a double round), one can listen to its time-honored lingo for hours without catching on.

Between the players is a board with two double rows of 30 holes each and gameholes at the end. In six-card cribbage, most popular of the game's variations, six cards are dealt to each player, two of which are discarded face down for the crib (which belongs to the dealer). The rest of the pack is cut and a "starter" card turned up. Then the players play out their hands--each in turn laying a card face up on his own side of the table, calling out the number of pips on each card as it is played and adding them to those of the previous cards. Object: to make exactly 31 (which counts two points)--or, before 31 is reached, to make Pairs (two points). Triplets (six points), Fours (twelve points), Runs or Sequences (a point for each card), Fifteens (two points). After the eight cards have been laid down, with points pegged as made, each player reckons (and pegs) the counting value of his own cards--using the "starter"' card as common property. Finally, the dealer turns up the crib, counts that in addition to his own hand.

To some 16,000,000 U. S. citizens, cribbage is still just the right mental exercise for a long winter evening. Every year more & more cribbage boards come down from U. S. attics, more & more families fall under its spell. Long associated with fire stations, country stores and farmers' kitchens, cribbage has lately crawled into business offices and church vestries. Last year a National Cribbage Association was organized, consolidating the dozens of leagues (mostly in the Midwest) that have sprung up, like bowling leagues, to advertise and fraternize business firms and clubs.

For last week's national tournament, 2,064 competitors showed up--ranging from seven-year-old Johnny Larkey, who learned to play at three (and lasted longer -than his father or three uncles last week), to 82-year-old William Dunne, a cribbage addict for 62 years. With low mumbling (calling the cards' values) that sounded like a muted session in a wheat pit, they played 12,000 games before Champion Butterfield was finally crowned. Then, an autographed cribbage board was presented to the Minnesota State Historical Society to commemorate the first cribbage championship held in the U. S.

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