Authors is a game similar to Go Fish, but it requires a higher level of skill. When playing with a standard deck, the goal of Authors is to collect the most “books” of cards—all four cards of a rank, and all four cards showing works of an Author when playing with a specialized Authors card deck. Counting, recognizing card names, pairing based on criteria, and remembering what players have already asked are all required skills.
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The best number of players for Authors is three to five. A single deck of cards is shuffled and dealt to the players one at a time in a face down stack, with jokers removed, so that each player has as close to an even number of cards as possible. Following the distribution of the cards, each player places any “books” of four cards of the same rank in his or her hand into a pile.
The player to the dealer’s left goes first, asking another player for a card by rank, such as “Tanya, give me your fives.” If the named player has any cards of that rank, he or she must hand them over to the player who requested them. If the new card(s) create a book, the player must place it in his or her stack before asking again. The turn of the player continues as long as his or her requests are granted. Play moves to the left when he or she requests a card that the designated player does not have. The game will continue until all of the cards have been turned into books.
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Playing authors can choose from a variety of specialized decks. A deck with thirteen American authors, rather than card ranks, and four different books of each author, rather than suits, is typical. For example, four works by Ralph Waldo Emerson, four works by Mark Twain, four works by Henry David Thoreau, four works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and so on. Another option for a prolific author like William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens is to have each work represent a rank, with the four cards representing four major characters from that work.