Deal Away

56 World Lotto Playing Cards
Nuventions, Inc.

There is, obviously, not very much even the most skilled copywriter could say about this deck. It is simply a random number generator for lazy people. Or, perhaps, for afficionados of playing cards. But it's certainly effective, and if you have no faith in your own ability to come up with uncorrelated random numbers, give ths deck a shot. It's designed to work with the weekly lotteries, where you have to pick six (or so) unique numbers from one to something like fifty, and with the dailies, where you're expected to pick a four- or five-digit number. Just shuffle and deal the right number of cards.

But for all that this deck is plain by itself, it's part of the greater field of interesting decks of cards that exist to assist other games. Like a deck I have with instructions on each card for playing winning black-jack, or the Football Widows deck, this deck is strangely schizophrenic. It is a deck of playing cards, to be sure, but when you're playing, the numbers printed on it are useless. And it's an assistant to the lottery players, to be equally sure - but when you're making up numbers, the ranks and suits are meaningless. I am tempted to write a game which uses both sides of this deck, giving it, finally, one activity which brings its disparate sides into one whole.

All images © Nuventions, Inc., presented here solely for analysis and appreciation.