Allurements of Flinch by James Ball Naylor*

There’s people down to Clovertown
whose only end an’ aim
Is jest to set an’ fiddle with some dern
fool, silly game
They used to play at tid’lywinks an’
authors – an’ I guess,
They hankered after dominoes, an’
crokinole, an’ chess:
An’ as fer checkers – goodness me! –
they said you couldn’t find
A better thing to cultivate the morals
an’ the mind
But now – by gum, it makes me laugh
– they wouldn’t give a pinch
Of salt, fer’ all them former games:
The only thing is “Flinch”

The Booths didn’t “give a pinch of salt” and had a number of copies of the game “Flinch.”  Henry Scripps Booth wrote, “The commonest social entertainment when we lived in Detroit was playing the card game of Flinch. It was also popular across Trumbull Avenue at the Scripp’s home. Later we also played it at Cranbrook.”

One of the Booth’s copies of the game Flinch (CECT 277)

Invented in 1901 by Arthur J. Patterson (1869-1948) of Kalamazoo, Michigan, “Flinch” is the card game that took America by storm in the early 1900’s. The object of the game is to stockpile and then get rid of all your cards.

According to the BoardGameGeek website,

Flinch is played with a deck of 150 cards numbered 1-15. Players can play cards in sequence (building up from 1 to 15) to piles formed in the center of the table. “1” cards must be played to start the piles, but others may be played or held at the player’s discretion. Cards may be played from several sources: a player’s hand (five cards to start), a player’s “game pile” (a stack of 10 cards of which only the top card is face up and playable), or a player’s “reserve piles” (whenever a player passes or completes a turn, they must add a card from their hand to their reserve piles – up to five reserve piles may be formed). Hands are continually replenished with new sets of five cards during the game. The object is to play all 10 cards from game pile to the center of the table.

– Leslie S. Mio, Associate Registrar

*”Allurements of Flinch,” Kalamazoo Gazette, 12 July 1903, page 14, column 4