User talk:Todd
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Hi Todd! Was your trip back from Lille okay? How about emailing your email address to me? :-) --Jwinius 21:06, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
singular / plural of tierce etc.
[edit]Tierce is French and means basically the same as triple in English and trio in Italian. It makes no sense to put this in the plural and leave sixième etc. in the singular. The Bicycle rules might well contain an error, although it is not present in the online version. [1] David Parlett is a scholar on card games, he wrote the Oxford History of Card Games (Oxford University Press). Pagat.com is also well known as a very reliable source on card games, frequently cited by Parlett. Both use tierce etc. in the singular in the same way as the other terms.
There is also a table on page 61 of the Turf Club rules which is very similar to our table. You can download it as a PDF or read it online in DJVU format from http://www.archive.org/details/lawsofpiquetadop00caveuoft . This was the authority on Piquet in England when it was still generally in use, and this was where Britannica 1911 got its rules from. Of course the table uses the singular. Hans Adler 20:04, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I must correct myself concerning the meaning of tierce: It means third, as in music. That's also why it continues with sixième after quint. Hans Adler 20:11, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- PS: I looked up your old version. [2] It was basically correct, since you said "tierces [...] are worth 3 points" etc. But you forgot the silent plural s's (and the accents) in "sixièmes [...] are worth 16 points" etc. In the present table the plural makes no sense. Hans Adler 20:15, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- You make a good point and cite some good sources (thanks for the Portland/Turf Clubs reference). It could arguably go either way: third/fourth/fifth or thirds/fourths/fifths (quint = fifth while quinze = fifteen). Obviously, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen refer to point values and are always singular. Todd (talk) 20:23, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- We could put everything into the plural, but in a table singular is generally better style. Hans Adler 20:33, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- That was not the argument. The argument was thirds/fourths/fifths in plural, since they refer to a run or sequence count, and sixteen/seventeen/eighteen as singular, since they refer to point values. I appreciate the English references. However, they're English. If we ever find an authority on middle French or a reference from that period in the original language, perhaps we can arrive at a final answer. Since you've taken the liberty of reverting the change again, we'll just leave it at that for now. Todd (talk) 21:02, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I see. Sixième etc. actually means sixth etc. So the sequence, when translated to English, just means third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth. Even if you are referring to the sequence tierce, quart, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, which I think is also sometimes used, it still doesn't make much sense. No source that I have seen refers to an individual set of three cards as tierces. It's always a tierce. Just like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a trilogy, not trilogies, or a set of three musical pieces is a trio, not trios. If you are using the plural in this way when playing, it's probably an error that crept in through a misunderstanding and an unfortunately broken tradition. It seems the game went abruptly out of fashion during WWI.
- I don't think that French is relevant, since this is the English Wikipedia. But here is a quotation from the Picquet section of the 1735 edition of a very old French game book (Le Royal Jeu de l-Hombre et celui du Piquet): "Chaque tierce vaut trois points, les quartes, les quintes quinze, les sixiémes seize, les septiémes dis-sept, les huitiemes dis-huit, les neuviémes dix-neuf [...]."
- In English: "Each tierce is worth three points, the quarts, the quints fifteen, the sixièmes sixteen, the septièmes seventeen, the huitièmes eighteen, the neuvièmes nineteen [...]."
- You can see that there is a misprint here, the value of the quart being omitted. (Such errors are normal for the high-volume books of the time.) It changes from singular (each tierce) to plural (the quarts) for purely stylistic reasons, but it's clear that one tierce is three cards. The neuvième is still mentioned here; that's because Piquet was originally played with 36 cards. (That's the reason why some European games such as Jass are still played with 36 games. The picquet pack was very influential, and not all games followed when it was reduced to 32 cards.)
- A 1730 edition of a more recent work (Académie Universelle des Jeux) doesn't have such a list, but consider the following in an example: "Je suppose qu'un des Joueurs ait les quatres Tierces Majores, & que son Point soit bon [...]".
- In English: "I assume that one of the players has the three major tierces, and that his point is good [...]." A major tierce is AKQ, and a minor tierce is 789. Any other tierce is named by the highest rank it contains. You can also find this terminology in the Turf Club rules, I believe.
- I have gone literally through dozens of such books in French and English (most of them available from Google Books or archive.org), and I have never seen the convention that you seem to be proposing. Hans Adler 22:12, 13 August 2009 (UTC)