My Daily Bread Crumbs 29 Aug 2022

On August 29, honor expertise, authority, and the rules because it is According to Hoyle Day. Named after the English language phrase, according to Hoyle, the unofficial holiday celebrates the life and times of Englishman Edmond Hoyle, who died on this day in 1769.

A lawyer by trade, Edmond Hoyle is best known for publishing books detailing the rules and regulations of many popular card and board games of his time, including chess and backgammon. He is also known for writing an authoritative pamphlet on the card game of Whist.

Game of Skills

Whist is a trick card game played by two teams of two players each. The card game evolved from a previous game called Ruff and Honors and is the predecessor of Bridge. Popular in the 18th and the 19th century, the game required mathematical and logical skills.

Appeal to Authority

The phrase according to Hoyle came from the authoritative books Hoyle wrote on the rules and regulations of games. When people played these games and made a play that was questioned, they could invoke Hoyle's rules by saying “according to Hoyle...”. Today, the phrase is used generally to suggest expertise or the highest authority on a subject matter.

How to Celebrate?

Play a game of Whist by following Hoyle's rules. Don't know how? Today is a good excuse to learn!
Are you an expert on a subject? Why not spend the day jotting your thought about the subject?

Did You Know…

…the word Whist comes from whisk, from whisking or moving the cards during the game?

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Crossword Puzzle Answers You’d Never get Right:

• Star of Gravity (Newton)

• You say potato, I say __(carbsmakemefat)

• Turned water into wine (ernestandjulio)

• Number of wheels on an 18-wheeler (goingtoofasttocount)

• Etsy, Russian (nyetsy)

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News that her third child was going to be a girl thrilled my cousin, who already had two boys. "My husband wants to call her Sunny," she told me, "and I want to give her Anna as her middle name in memory of my mom."

I thought they might want to reconsider their decision, since their birth announcement would herald the arrival of Sunny Anna Rainey.

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My niece bought her five-year-old daughter, Kayleigh, a hamster. One day he escaped from his cage. The family turned the house upside down and finally found him. Several weeks later, while Kayleigh was at school, he escaped from his cage again. My niece searched frantically but never found the critter. Hoping to make the loss less painful for Kayleigh, my niece took the cage out of her room.

When Kayleigh came home from school that afternoon, she climbed into her mother’s lap. “We’ve got a serious problem,” she announced. “Not only is my hamster gone again, but this time he took the cage.”

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A man won an $8,000 settlement from Disneyland after he got stuck on the It’s a Small World ride.

He said he’ll use the money to cut out the part of his brain that won’t stop playing “It’s a Small World After All.”