Duck Duck Bruce

Keep flipping. Bruce is in there somewhere.

Ducks, a hound named Bruce, and a deck you turn over one card at a time hoping he stays where he is. Peter Neugebauer designed it, and it is about as pure a push-your-luck game as exists — there is precisely one decision in it, and you make it over and over until somebody wins.

You reveal cards one at a time and may stop whenever you like, banking everything turned over so far. Keep going and the pile grows. Turn up Bruce and the lot goes back, along with your turn. That is the whole game, and children turn out to be unnervingly good at it, largely because they have not yet learned how to talk themselves into one more card.

Perfect for: Teaching a six-year-old about variance, cheaply, before somebody else teaches them expensively.

2–5 players | 20 minutes | Age 6+