Tarot and playing cards: a history quiz
A quiz on how tarot relates to ordinary cards: Mamluk suits, the missing Knight, where the Joker really came from and how the French still play tarot.
- 5 questions
- ≈ 2 min
- +5 bronze keys for a flawless run
How are tarot and playing cards related?
This quiz checks whether you know how tarot relates to the ordinary deck people use for poker or rummy. The link is direct: tarot grew out of playing cards, not the other way round. Cards reached Europe in the late fourteenth century, most likely from Mamluk Egypt, and they already had four suits and court figures. The Mamluk suits, cups, coins, swords and polo sticks, became cups, coins, swords and batons in Italy.
Tarot appeared when a series of picture trumps and the Fool were added to such a deck. That gives 78 cards: four suits of 14, plus 21 trumps and the Fool. The ordinary French 52-card deck went another way: it lost the Knight, and the Latin suits gave way to spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds.
Where is tarot still played?
In France tarot is a popular trick-taking game with trumps. It uses 78 cards, and the Fool is called the Excuse, because it lets you skip following suit. Austria and Hungary play Tarock, whose trumps show scenes of everyday life rather than the familiar Major Arcana. Spanish and Italian decks still keep the Latin suits of cups, coins, swords and batons.
The Joker, on the other hand, often called a descendant of the Fool, actually appeared in the nineteenth century in the American game of euchre. The resemblance is real, but the family tie was invented later. There are many stories like this, and the quiz will help you tell facts from pretty guesses.
How the quiz works
Each run draws five questions from a pool of twelve: suits, court figures, numbers and the rules of old games. Each answer comes with a short explanation, and the run ends with a full review. Finish a run without a mistake and Tayna awards you keys. Knowing this family tree helps with reading too: the suit correspondences show why Cups speak of feelings and Pentacles of money and the body.
All questions and answers
Open after you play: the full question set with right answers and explanations.
1. What did Mamluk cards have in place of the later wands?
Right answer: Polo sticks
The Mamluk suits were cups, coins, swords and polo sticks. In Italy the sticks became batons.
2. The Joker in a regular deck is a direct descendant of the tarot Fool.
Right answer: Myth
The Joker appeared in the 1800s in the American game of euchre. It looks like the Fool but is no relative.
3. Which tarot suit is usually matched with hearts?
Right answer: Cups
Hearts and Cups are the suit of feeling. Diamonds go with Pentacles, clubs with Wands, spades with Swords.
4. How many cards must be added to a 52-card deck to make a 78-card tarot?
Right answer: 26
Four Knights, 21 trumps and the Fool: exactly 26 cards.
5. Which tarot court figure is missing from a 52-card deck?
Right answer: The Knight
Tarot has four court cards per suit. The French deck kept King, Queen and Jack and dropped the Knight.
6. What do the trumps of Austrian Tarock show?
Right answer: Scenes of daily life
Tarock trumps show rural and town scenes. There are no allegories like Death or the Tower.
7. What is the Fool called in the French game of tarot?
Right answer: L'Excuse
The Excuse: playing the Fool lets you skip following suit. Le Petit is the first trump.
8. In a Paris café people play tarot with 78 cards. What are the trumps for?
Right answer: Trumping in play
In the game the 21 trumps beat any suit, and points come from the cards won in tricks.
9. Which word does the English word trump come from?
Right answer: Triumph
Trump is a shortened triumph, a memory of the Italian trionfi, the first tarot trumps.
10. The French suits of spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds are older than tarot suits.
Right answer: Myth
The French suits appeared in the later 1400s, while the Latin suits reached Europe earlier.
11. Which ordinary deck still uses the tarot suits today?
Right answer: The Spanish deck
Spanish suits are copas, oros, espadas and bastos: cups, coins, swords and batons.
12. In which century are playing cards first recorded in Europe?
Right answer: The 14th century
The first European records of playing cards date from the 1370s. Tarot came later.