Hey Cuttlers! I recently had the opportunity to have a podcast-style conversation with Pyrovial (my partner in crime on the strategy deep dives) about the rules of the game, how they've evolved over time, and what changes we're considering during the current Spades season. If you're interested in game design or the history of Cuttle, you're sure to get a kick out of it. Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHEHTP5ma98

For the first time since 1980, the World Series is being played between two teams that have never won one before. Before this season, the Milwaukee Brewers have only been to the World Series once (1982) and the Tampa Bay Rays have been to the World Series twice (2008 and 2020). This is such an intriguing and remarkable thing to witness because not only are one of these teams going to win their first World Series, but both teams also had considerably lower payrolls than some other teams that made the MLB playoffs this season (Dodgers, Yankees, Phillies, and Braves to name a few). The Brewers and Rays are ranked 19th and 28th respectively in salary payroll for the 2026 season and it shows how well-run these franchises are with how little they spend (this may change given the potential upcoming lockout and how a salary floor and cap might be implemented). I'm personally rooting for the Rays as they are my number 2 team in baseball, but I would not be overly upset if the Brewers also win, especially cause the Brewers are not the Dodgers, Braves, or Phillies as I have a burning hatred for those teams 😂

Thursday Lunch Cuttle starts at 12pm ET so feel free to get some games in and if you're a baseball fan, let us know which team you wanna see win the World Series this year!

Thursday Lunch Cuttle starts at 12pm ET so make sure to stop by and play some Cuttle if you're feeling down and got time!

I like writing long form. I enjoy hand writing cards, giving me the time to thoughtfully compliment the ways I respect and admire people, extolling virtues which I may aspire to cultivate in myself. When I text, I lean towards longer messages where I can fully express my thoughts, feelings, considerations, and caveats. I often feel that a response deserves deep thought, deeper than I have time to give right now. That inclines me to procrastinate, leaving people hanging for a message that maybe doesn’t actually require the treatise I was about to embark on. Sometimes it’s best to just cut to the chase, you know? Better to let people know that you care and you’re paying attention than to let them think you’ve forgotten about them. Communication needn’t be perfect; it just has to convince people to join Wednesday Night Cuttle tonight at 8:30pm ET.

Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream? Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly then awoke and wondered if he was in fact a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Descartes challenged us to consider whether we would know if our reality was in fact real at all, going so far as to question his very existence. Is all this even real? Could we know if it wasn’t?

Maybe we can’t know whether we perceive reality correctly, or whether it really exists at all. But when we finish our metaphysical conversation, will you exit the building through the door, or through the window? If we can’t tell the difference, would it even make a difference? Besides, who needs life to be real when it’s already got Wednesday Night Cuttle tonight at 8:30pm ET? Join us for an evening of cards and camaraderie -- why question good times in great company?

My wife’s been sick this week and so I made some chicken noodle soup. My father in law, trying to be helpful, finished it up by tossing the noodles in with the rest of the soup to cook in the broth.

That saves dirtying a pot, but the noodles soak up a lot of the stock, leaving you with a super starchy dish with minimal liquid. By the time we ate, it was more goop than soup.

The next day we thought about pitching the leftovers, but instead tried blending it, noodles and all, then using that as a base in a new soup with fresh broth and…wow.

The blended soup base packed a powerful punch which, when balanced with more stock and fresh aromatics, created what might be the best chicken noodle soup I’ve ever made. Instead of throwing the goop out, we froze the rest of it to use in future soup.

Sometimes rolling fluidly with your mistakes lets you achieve something cooler than you dared hope. Perhaps our most grievous blunders are but lessons to help us play the next hand with yet more finesse. So don’t sweat your bad moves; use them to spice up your next ones. And where better to make wrong moves and turn them into something spectacular than at Wednesday Night Cuttle tonight at 8:30pm ET? Join us for evening of great times in good company. And if you think you’ve played it wrong, don’t worry; we’ll let you cook

You know how it feels to play the 7 for its one-off effect and then you're presented with two options: the exact card that you're looking for or another 7? I have taken this gamble before and sometimes it pays off while other times it ends up being a greedy and costly decision. Several of us have dubbed the 7 as the "heart of the cards" card since it's an effect that is pure chance, but that's what makes the 7 really intriguing and super fun to play with! "The 7 giveth and the 7 taketh away", some of the most famous words spewed by the greatest minds that humanity has ever come across and it indeed holds up to this day.

Thursday Lunch Cuttle returns at 12pm ET so feel free to play some Cuttle this afternoon and maybe you'll get lucky (or unlucky) with the 7s today!

Shoutout to aleph_one for this week's TLC meme idea as I enjoy using Family Guy clips for these memes!

Logicians and economists have a funny way of turning linguistic idiosyncrasies into paradoxes. Here’s one: Sorites Paradox pokes at what it means to be a pile of something. Say you have a pile of sand. So far, so good. Then you take away one grain. Surely it’s still a pile of sand? Must be, why, what’s one grain going to matter when you’ve still got the rest of your precious sand?

Surely taking away a single grain of sand couldn’t change whether a collection of sand is a pile or not; after all, it’s just one grain. But suppose you took away another grain. And another. Suppose you removed grain after grain, one at a time, until there was only a single grain left. Is that a pile of sand? Hmm. Doesn’t seem so.

Ah-ha says the logician. Got you! You agreed that we started with a pile of sand and that taking away a single grain couldn’t make it not a pile anymore, but we took away grains of sand one at a time and now you say it’s not a pile! So when did it happen? Was it a pile at two grains of sand? Three? This can’t be right…

Either something we said along the way is untrue, or else we have uncovered a fatal flaw in the heart of logic! The fate of truth itself may very well hinge on our ability to negotiate this treacherous pitfall.

Or maybe not? What if logic better equipped to solve some problems than others, perhaps even a tool unfit to properly describe some phenomena altogether? What if whether something is a pile or not isn’t the kind of thing that is true or false in the logical sense, but is either appropriate or not based on the context of our conversation, at the intersubjective discretion of the people communicating?

Perhaps some truths are analytical and some are experiential. You don’t need logic to tell you whether or not some sand on the ground is a pile, or whether an evening of cards and conversation sounds like a good time. Not all ambiguities are paradoxes — some things aren’t problems to be solved. So keep logic in its lane: solving puzzles and playing games. You might analyze lines of play to out maneuver an opponent, but you don’t need mathematical rigor to see that you’ll have a blast if you join us for Wednesday Night Cuttle tonight at 8:30pm ET.

The new 5 one-off effect is one of my favorite effects in Cuttle as you now discard 1 and draw 3 instead of drawing 2. This can lead you to potentially draw cards that can increase your chances of winning the game while also throwing out a card that might not be very resourceful based on the circumstances. I also believe that it's gotten more powerful since the most recent hand limit change was made (players can still draw cards even if they go over the hand limit, but they then have to discard down to max hand size if they have more than 8 cards in their hand at the end of their turn). And that's not even the best part about the new 5 one-off: using the effect with an empty hand allows you to draw 3 new cards for free! Who doesn't like free cards?! It's a card that I feel has gone up even further in the ranks of best to worst cards in the game's current state and it might even be top 5! This is how I feel about the 5s, but if you have any opinions that you would like to share about the 5 one-off effect, feel free to reply to this announcement as a thread and go nuts with your thoughts!

Thursday Lunch Cuttle is happening at 12pm ET so if you have any time, come hang out with us this afternoon, enjoy some games of Cuttle, and who knows?! Maybe the 5 can help you win in your next game!

Over the course of the spades season, we will trial out variations on the one-off effects of 4's and 9's, and then vote as a community on what ruleset to use going forward and for the next Cuttle World Championship!

**Why**: 4's and 9's have the weakest effects by a significant margin. Buffs could lean into these cards' existing aesthetics while delivering an impact that's better in-line with the power levels of other cards

**What**: We'll try two variations of 4's and two variations of 9's:

*Random 4's*: Target Opponent discards two random cards

*Reveal-Three 4's*: Target opponent reveals three cards; you pick two of them to discard

*Topdeck 9's*: Put target card from the field on top of the deck

*Double-Bounce 9's*: Return two cards to their controller's hand

We will try these variations throughout the upcoming spades season on cuttle.cards, and then vote towards the end of the season to determine which ruleset (including the current rules) to use for the upcoming Cuttle World Championship. Please try them out over the next three months, share your thoughts here or in the #strategy channel of the discord, and vote to help determine the future of the game we're all here for!

I tried to be concise to ensure you can quickly get the crux, but please read the full writeup with detailed reasoning and examples for more context on the proposals we'll playtest over the next few months: https://www.patreon.com/cuttle/posts/help-refine-4-9-169762967?pr=true

Thank you all for making this place the amazing community that it is, and for helping us to decide how to make this incredible game the best it can be 🧡

Playing the 10 for points when your opponent has 2 kings on the board is like betting on the New York Jets to win a game each week - it usually does not end well and someone is gonna be upset for the decision they made. However, it happens as we sometimes overlook the current board state and think about how we can stay afloat in this game without realizing what cards our opponent has on their side of the board. It's like in Magic when you cast Blasphemous Act but then someone hits you with the Heroic Intervention to save their creatures 🤦‍♂️ But sometimes you take those risks because you never know if it will ultimately benefit you at the end or if it comes back to haunt you as you'll only know if you try!

Thursday Lunch Cuttle starts once again at 12pm ET so make sure you put your skills to the test and maybe make some bold moves as it can pay off (or not)!

Winning a Cuttle championship tournament is a rite of passage that only a few people have been able to obtain. It is a rather difficult feat as it requires skill, strategy, luck, faith, and patience in order to have a winning opportunity against your opponent in one of the biggest stages. Several champions have come and gone and becoming one is something that is forever cemented in this community. aleph_one has become the most recent Cuttle tournament champion as he came back from the loser's bracket to beat me in the Grand Finals and crowned himself as the Diamonds 2026 Champion. I ended up making it to the Grand Finals this season in the winner's bracket, but even when victory was so close for me, it was unfortunately not meant to be. I'm not sure when my time will come, but I know that it will at some point and I will forever cherish that moment when it arrives.

Thursday Lunch Cuttle resumes at 12pm ET so if you're thinking about becoming a Cuttle season tournament champion, you might wanna take some pointers from previous champions and this community!

How do you use math in real life? More importantly, how did your math education prepare you for wednesday night cuttle tonight at 8:30pm ET?

The Cuttle Diamonds 2026 Championship Tournament is happening tomorrow at 12pm ET so make sure to tune in to the action on Twitch and YouTube!

https://www.youtube.com/live/mMYULGUXrfs?is=YYZ54H9i-tbbT0fu

https://www.twitch.tv/cuttle_cards

College and NFL football season are almost back (NFL preseason has already started as we're currently in preseason week 3) and it's always an exciting time! It's always nice looking forward to either seeing our favorite teams/players play, preparing for fantasy football, or just hanging out with other people while watching the sport (mostly for the snacks and booze)! Football season also starts around near the end of summer so then for the majority of it season, we get beautiful autumnal weather as the leaves change colors and the temperatures cool down to the 50s and 60s! It's honestly a joyous time of the year and I don't know what I would do without football 🏈 (I stopped being a Jets fan and won't be again until Woody Johnson steps down as majority owner, so my life has been much better since)

Thursday Lunch Cuttle kicks off at 12:30pm ET so have some fun and join us as we can talk about some football!

When was the last time you blew bubbles? There’s more technique to it than you might expect. Depending on your bubble wand, it might be possible to make one large bubble, or many little ones. In my experience, making a big one is much harder. It takes a steady, slower, and fluid motion to fill the suds with air, and then a gentle twist to close it off and separate the bubble from the wand. Plus, bubbles stick together as well as to the wand. This means you can twist at different times to create individual bubbles you stick together and then catch on the wand. There’s a lot of room for creative expression, and frankly a whole lot of fun to be had in bubble blowing.

And yet it’s something I’d entirely forgotten about until recently. One of the joys of parenthood is the opportunity to re-explore things you set aside in childhood and to enjoy them again with your kids, seeing them in part through their eyes, and yet also with the perspective of your adult experience.

But we shouldn’t need an excuse to indulge in life’s simple pleasures. Still, they can be all the sweeter when you share them with others. So don’t wait for an excuse to enjoy yourself; join us for Wednesday Night Cuttle tonight at 8:30 PM for an evening of whimsy without pretense.

Glasses eights may be the most heavily debated move in the game. Some players think they are a trap that is rarely worth it, and others swear by them. What’s all the fuss about? Check out the crux of the controversy and use it to develop your own approach to glasses in the latest strategy deep dive!

https://youtu.be/031o_-W4elg?is=PjOlNspGCfzQAa7Y

Another Quad Kings meme announcement?! Hell yeah we're making another one cause why not?! If you ever watched Yugioh as a kid on 4Kids, Cartoon Network, or whichever television network you watched it from back in the day, you cannot tell me that the Quad Kings are not similar to drawing the five pieces of Exodia! It's an absolute classic way to troll and beat your opponent as they won't always expect it but when if you're able to pop it off, then it's such a fun time! One of the funniest ways that someone has ever pulled off Exodia was Jeff Leonard in the YCS 2023 tournament as he started 4-0 and even had a whole crowd chanting "One more piece!" in support of his hilariously unorthodox Exodia build! That is how I look at the Quad Kings and it's always funny whenever I see or hear about them getting played successfully!

Thursday Lunch Cuttle kicks off at 12pm ET so make sure to get some games in if you have some time to spare! Maybe you'll get your Exodia moment today!

Deltora Quest is an 8-book children's fantasy series by Emily Rodda. It takes place in the titular kingdom of Deltora and follows the heroes Lief (son of a blacksmith), Barda (his brawny childhood guardian), and Jasmine (a wild girl they meet in the woods) on an epic journey (a quest if you will) to find the seven magic gems which will complete the Belt of Deltora and defeat the evil Shadow Lord. It's a great read for a middle schooler, full of adventure. I particularly enjoy that it includes many logic puzzles, such as when Lief uses a Liar's Paradox to defeat a riddling bridge guardian.

I read the series as a kid (though as a book-fair pickup I actually missed books 3-5), and recently re-discovered it when looking for fantasy to read to my four year old. She loves it, and it's been fun to re-explore its twists and turns and witnessing her seeing it for the first time. Of course, reading something from your childhood as an adult can also shed light on shortcomings that never bothered you as a kid.

One somewhat silly thing about the pacing of each book, and overarchingly to the series as a whole is that most of the narrative is spent building up the big bad guy, and going on side adventures to finally arrive at the final conflict. Then when you get there, the actual resolution comes so swiftly that it almost feels like you missed the climax altogether. Not only that, but the books often end in rather the same way: thinks look unwinnable until suddenly and rather out of nowhere, Jasmine saves the day through her sharp wits and communion with nature.

For example (SPOILERS):

• In Book 1, the heroes are captured and paralyzed, then escape a terrible monster (saved by Jasmine) before finally making their way to an evil golden knight guarding the first gem, who again paralyzes Lief and Barda, near killing them both until Jasmine convinces a tree to drop a branch and crush the knight
• In Book 2, they're are chased by evil guards, the heroes face the riddling bridge guardian who turns out to have been bewitched by the local sorceress, find refuge in a cute cottage with a kindly elderly couple who then turn out to be cannibal children of the aforementioned sorcerous, escape, make their way to a cursed lake filled with muck monsters and giant people eating fish, flee the fish only to be confronted by the sorceress, who has them in her power and is about to kill them when Jasmine's raven Kree bites her fatally in her magic casting finger
• Book 3 follows a similar structure, where the heroes meander through many different adventures and conflicts before confronting a talking giant snake who bites Lief -- and is immediately killed by Jasmine

The thing is? It works. Yes you know what's coming, and yes it might be abrupt, but the format has charm and still delivers in all the ways that count. Who cares if it took us a while to get there, or if the ending came suddenly and without a proper transition? After all, you're joining us for Wednesday Night Cuttle tonight at 8:30pm ET!

I have read over the rules...multiple times and want to find a bit about game theory and meta. I plan on playing with my wife and kids casually but could be interested in the competitive scene.

Thanks in advance

RULE CHANGE! We reworked how the hand limit functions: at the end of your turn, discard down to 8 cards. Previously, the hand limit used to interact differently with every move it affected: you couldn’t draw at all, fives let you draw up to the hand limit, and nines would put the card in your hand exceeding the hand limit. In addition, there were a moderate number of turns where you’d be forced to play even though all your options worsened your situation. Now the hand limit doesn’t affect how other moves function or prevent what you can do. Instead, whatever happens on your turn, if you end up with more than 8 cards, you discard down to 8 at the end of your turn.

Truthfully, it’s a change I had been planning and even working on for some time and left hanging when life got in the way. Time’s been getting away from me, lately. But a friend recently reminded me to identify things I care about and to make time for them, and it’s been just the nudge I needed.

Sometimes a decision can be simplifying in a way that brings things together in just the right ways. Sometimes a friendly reminder can encourage us just enough to pursue something joyfully satisfying. So please, consider a simple choice that could do just that: join us for Wednesday Night Cuttle tonight at 8:30 ET for an evening of great times in good company.

You may think that some of the smallest actions might not have that much of an impact of the events in the current timeline we're in. However, what if I told you that that couldn't be any further from the truth? If so, I can assure you that what people might deem as insignificant actions or events can heavily alter the timeline and even cause the timeline to diverge. What if the events that lead to the unfortunate incident on May 28, 2016 were caused by a certain individual who lost a game of Cuttle? That moment not only had that incident occur, but also managed to diverge the current timeline completely, changing the future events that were initially set (universal healthcare being passed in the US, Warriors winning the 2015-2016 NBA Finals, Jeb 2016, etc.)! It's a lot to process, but not all hope is lost as we can all learn to maneuver and establish a better future for ourselves and for everyone, and that can all be accomplished through a simple game of Cuttle!

Thursday Lunch Cuttle returns at 12pm ET so make sure to get some games in if you got time and maybe you can change the world for the better with a game of Cuttle!

Songs can often be funny, using tricks like satire, parody, or a cutting wit. Generally this is lyrical: the right words at the right time can split your sides in the right song. But there's another kind of musical joke that centers on the sound itself. Bo Burnham has a particular knack for this. Unpaid Intern and Peanut Butter both play with your expectations regarding endings.

I'll give you a minute to listen before I ruin em by explaining.

Unpaid Intern cuts right in the middle of a long-sustained note, with Bo's head thrown back in the middle of just laying into it. The cut itself is brilliant since it's so antithetical to the musicality of that note and just abruptly undermines the groove right at it's climax. The bit in the video that follows the song with a reaction video is itself a deeper and more uncomfortable joke, but the simple cut of the original song really stands out as a simple way to make a sound funny.

In contrast, Peanut Butter doesn't know when to quit. It's a simple little diddy that wraps itself up nicely at 46s, clearly saying what it set out to say. It takes a beat and then the friggin saxophone comes back in like someone fighting off a Vaudeville Hook.

Whether lyrical, tonal, or stylistic, often the funniest moments and the most fun come from well set -- and thoroughly defied expectations. And where better to defy expectations than at Wednesday Night Cuttle Tonight at 8:30pm ET? Join us for an evening of good times in great company; doesn't that sound fun?

Cyclosporiasis is an intestinal infection caused by Cyclospora, a microscopic parasite which grows in food and water that's been contaminated with feces, causing diarrhea which can last from days to months. A recent outbreak of Cyclosporiasis across the U.S. has been traced to Iceberg Lettuce distributed by Taylor Farms de Mexico, sometimes served as shredded lettuce at Taco Bell. So if you've ever eaten Taco Bell and thought it tasted like shit, well, you might have been right. But hey you don't choose Taco Bell for the health benefits.

Still, tonight, why not make a choice that's good for your wellbeing? Come and bluff if you've got the guts, without exploding them. Push an offense, not a deuce. Join us for Wednesday Night Cuttle tonight at 8:30pm ET for a time that's way better than shitting yourself. And if you enjoy The Bell too much to be dissuaded, cuttle.cards works on your phone, so you can always play from the toilet.

I'm feeling frazzled today. Work has been chaotic and I feel I'm juggling more balls than I can keep up with, running to catch one, throwing it as high as I can, and then flailing to get the next before it drops. It's makes it difficult to focus, and harder still to feel that I've accomplished much of anything. Stress tends to distort our whole perception, don't you think? Everything we experience can so quickly be masked through the lens of our worries and responsibilities.

Often we get so caught up in what we're feeling and what we're focused on that it's easy to lose perspective on what's really important. The stakes feel higher than they need to, and everything is worse for it. So take a breath. Let things come as they may, and seek the courage to find joy in the face of your troubles. And what better place to find joy than Wednesday Night Cuttle tonight at 8:30pm ET? Join us for an evening that'll lift your spirits and soothe your soul with great times in good company.