CHAPTER 38: THE NEW ELEUSIS

The new Eleusis is a card game that is played by at least four to eight players (beyond 8 the game becomes long and chaotic). The game is played with an ordinary deck of cards, and was named for the ancient Eleusinian mysteries, religious rites in which initiates learned a cult’s secret rules. It was invented by Robert Abbott and it is of special interest because it provides a model of induction, which is the process at the heart of the scientific method.

The Start

The dealer has to make up a secret rule which is confined to the sequence of legally played cards in standard play, and must be neither easy nor too hard for players to figure out. When the secret rule has been established, two standard decks are shuffled together and the dealer deals 14 cards to each player excluding himself. The dealer places the starter card on the table and the chosen player begins the game which continues clockwise in a circle.  The cards are placed along the main line if correct (If they conform to the rule)- to the right of the starter card, otherwise on the side line as indicated in the diagram below. The dealer calls the play “right” or “wrong” as the players show their cards, and issues penalty to wrong cards played.

 

The Prophet

In case a player thinks they have figured out the rule, they can declare themselves prophet, in which case they take over the duties of the dealer; dealing cards, calling plays “right” or “wrong”, and issuing penalties to wrong plays. The judgments of the prophet are approved by the dealer, and in case the prophet makes a wrong judgment, he is declared a false prophet and overthrown immediately and the dealer resumes his duties.

In general, players score points by either ridding their hands of cards by making correct plays or becoming successful prophets. Incorrect plays and false prophets receive penalties of additional cards, which reduces their chances of winning. After a certain number of plays, players are expelled and the game ends when either all players are expelled or one player has successfully played his hand. Now the game is scored and the secret rule is revealed.

From “The Methodology of Knowledge Layers for Inducing Descriptions of Sequentially Ordered Events” by T. Dieterich, Martin Gardner has incorporated a brief summary of Eleusis from this masters’ thesis into the chapter, which is good and clear to the reader. It would have been good if he had shown more examples of possible secret rules which are included in this reference to enlighten the reader more about these rules. However, it is good that he did not mention the type of rules and the type of rule which each individual rule represents or steps of making the rule and checking its complexity; this would cause too much confusion to the reader.

Rules of Eleusis are also depicted in R. W. Schmittberger’s “New Rules for Classic Games”, which is a book of rules for many card and board games such as chess, monopoly, scrabble etc. From this Martin Gardner just picked the concise rules of Eleusis, such changes in rules with the presence or absence of the prophet etc. It is good that he did not mention general rules which would include other games to avoid confusing the reader.   

Finally, the article “Simulating Scientific Inquiry with the Card Game Eleusis” by H. C. Romesburg, shows how the game Eleusis relates to the Scientific theory. In the chapter, Martin Gardner mentions briefly that the game Eleusis provides a model for the Scientific method and that it is an analogy to life and the search for truth but does not go into detailed explanation of how this is the case, which is good, because then the reader would lose the meaning of the game they are trying to grasp. However, it would have been good for him to mention some examples that show how Eleusis is an analogy to the search for truth even without going into detail, for example, Rule embedding, hypotheses in Science etc which are mentioned in the reference.

All in all I think the author gave a good brief and understandable explanation of the game Eleusis. The fact that it is brief and concise makes it interesting and ensures less confusion to the reader. I enjoyed reading about Eleusis and would surely like to play it sometime