Auggie Mac's Book Cover Rummy

House Rules

Book Cover Rummy is a card game played with novels and their numbers. It is free, needs no account, and settles its own arguments.

Rule 1. The object

1.01 A shelving is one hand: six books, three trips, six returns, one rule. Close each shelving with the six books whose combined numbers best satisfy the rule in force. Five shelvings make a game. A game is worth 500.

Rule 2. The decks

2.01 Every card is one novel: its cover, its author, its year, and the numbers behind it. The numbers are its weeks on The New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list, its best position there, its weeks at No. 1, its pages, and its prizes: the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the Booker, and the Nobel, which belongs to the author and so to every book of theirs on the shelf.

2.02 The Whole Shop holds every card. The Bestsellers are the cards that made the list at least once. The Prize Shelf is the cards with a prize, whether they ever made the list or not; many did not. The era decks file a book by its year: The Early List (1931 to 1945), Midcentury (1946 to 1969), The Blockbuster Era (1970 to 1994) and The Internet Era (1995 on).

2.03 The shop has two rooms, and every deck can be dealt from either. The Shop Floor is the standard game: the novels everyone has heard of, whether or not they have read them. Play it until you are Well-Read. The Back Room is the expert game: the whole canon, floor included, which means every long-runner on the list and every prize winner since 1931, a good many of which you have never heard of. That is the point. Play it to call yourself a Master Bookseller. The rooms keep separate dailies, separate codes and separate Readerboards; a Back Room code never deals on the floor, and the other way round.

2.03 Cards are dealt by their covers. The cover, the author and the year are on the front. The numbers and the prizes are not.

Rule 2.03 comment: the list counts every week from the first list in October 1931 through June 2026, as published. A book still on the list is counted to June 2026. Pages are of a standard edition and will differ from the copy in your hand by a few. The scorer does not entertain appeals on pages.

Rule 3. The deal and the returns

3.01 Each shelving deals six books to the shelf. 3.02 Three trips back to the store follow, with a returns allowance of six for the shelving. On each trip return as many books as you like out of what is left of the allowance. Replacements come off the pile in the order they were stacked; you do not see them first. Spend all six on the first trip and the shelf that comes back is the shelf you ring up; spread them out and you can answer what the pile sends. Fold a corner to mark a book for return. 3.03 You may ring up your shelf at any time and give up the trips and returns you have left. When the allowance is spent, the shelf is rung up.

Rule 4. Judgment

4.01 Every hand is announced as a Starred hand or a Returned hand. In a Starred hand you build the best shelf: Staying Power (weeks on the list, in every game), Doorstops (pages), Number Ones (weeks at No. 1), The Prize Shelf (prizes) and First Editions (the oldest shelf). In a Returned hand you build the shelf that goes back to the publisher: Slim Volumes (fewest pages), Never Charted (fewest weeks), Also-Rans (the worst best positions, where a book that never made the list counts as sixteenth) and Fresh Ink (the youngest shelf).

4.02 The Doorstop Line is a Returned hand with a line. Get your shelf’s combined pages as close to the line as you can. One page over and the hand scores nothing.

4.03 Blind Date is sealed, like the brown-paper book by the register. The rule goes up after you ring up your shelf, and it may be Starred or Returned.

4.04 Your shelf is graded against every shelf in the deal: all 924 sixes that can be made from the twelve books you were shown. The grade is your percentile among them. Scorer’s note. Of the 924, exactly 168 cannot be reached by any legal run of returns. The scorer grades against all of them anyway. A grade of 100 means no shelf in the deal did better, and the game says so only when it is true.

4.05 Your six books are then bound as one and the bookseller names the book in the deck it most resembles. This finding is advisory and cannot be appealed.

Rule 5. Shelf notes and catalog cards

5.01 Tap the little card under any book and Auggie’s shelf note comes up. It is free, it is her opinion, and it may or may not help. 5.02 Under the note is the catalog card, with the numbers and the prizes. You have ten catalog cards a game. A card you pull stays open for the rest of the hand, with the number the rule judges printed on a sticker on the cover. Spend them where they change a decision. 5.03 At closing time, every book on your shelf can be looked up free.

Rule 6. Today’s Shelf and challenge links

6.01 Today’s Shelf is one deal a day, the same for everyone in the world, changing at midnight Greenwich time. Your first finished game of the day is the one that counts toward your streak; anything after that is a replay and says so. 6.02 A finished game packs into a short code. A friend who opens your link plays the identical deal against your numbers, hand for hand.

Rule 7. Behind the counter

7.01 The deal is decided by a seed, so the same code deals the same cards on every device on earth. 7.02 The game keeps no accounts and shows no ads. It calls out for two things: the covers, from Open Library, and the Readerboard, which lives with the game. Everything else is in the one file.

Rule 8. The Readerboard

8.01 A finished Today’s Shelf may be posted to the Readerboard under a handle. One post a day per deck in each room, and it is your first finished game of the day that may be posted; replays are practice. 8.02 The board replays your code on its own and writes down the tally it gets. It does not take your word for it. 8.03 The Season counts each reader’s best day, per deck and room. 8.04 A handle belongs to the device that first used it; if yours is taken, pick another. Letters, digits, spaces and the odd dot or dash; two to sixteen of them; no emoji. 8.05 Free play and past deals opened from challenge links are not posted.

An independent game. It is not affiliated with, licensed by or endorsed by any publisher, retailer, newspaper, prize or list. The New York Times is the newspaper that publishes the list; it has nothing to do with this game. Augustine “Auggie Mac” Macguffin is a fictional character, and so is her shop.