Random thoughts on “Eleusis” Card Game
I first heard of “Eleusis” the Card Game from the fine gentlemen at the “Shut Up&Sit Down” board game channel. I’ve been fascinated ever since, but hesitant to bring it to larger family gatherings because of fear of awkwardness. Eleusis emulates and is a metaphor for the relationship between God/laws of physics and knowledge-seeking scientists, and I’m not sure it would land with every audience.
Brief Game Overview:
Eleusis is a shedding-style card game played with one player (“God” or “Rule-maker”) creating a secret constraint by which cards can be played into a ‘row’. Constraints can range from alternating black and red cards, ascending values, only face cards, or only odd numbers.
Each other player then tries to shed their hand of cards by trying to play according to this secret constraint. They are penalized with drawing cards if their play doesn’t match God’s constraints. Detailed rules can be found with a quick google search if anyone is interested!
Eleusis is so striking in how well it fits as a metaphor for the scientific process! Especially in the ways players/scientists can fall to their own biases, in how we are limited by the tools we use to explore the universe, and in the magnificent creative lengths scientists have to go through to design their studies.
Imagine a game of Eleusis where the God/Rule-maker stipulates that each card has to be a different colour from every other one in the row. Players with a dollar-store Bicycle deck would not have to tools to fully work out this constraint, and play would be dead in the water. It would take a particularly creative player to break out the Uno or Skip-bo decks.
Or if a constraint follows the Fibonacci sequence, players would only be able to infer the cards after the King is played. They could make an educated guess, but they would never truly know if they got the constraint correct.
There’s something lovely about the thought that we’re trying to understand something so vast and unfathomable with a deck of cards. For me, reading about theories of retro-causality, time crystals, or even new species of bioluminescent Bristle worms in Japan is a constant reminder that fiction is not the only way to bend my brain towards creativity.
