Forty-fives
trick-taking card game
Forty-fives (also known as auction forty-fives, auction 120s, 120, and growl) is a trick-taking card game that originated in Ireland. The game is popular in many communities throughout Atlantic Canada (New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island) as well as the Gaspé Coast in Québec. Forty-fives is also played in parts of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire in New England, United States, as well as in the South Island of New Zealand. Some other very small populations of players also seem to reside in Seattle, Washington and Los Angeles, California by way of traveling from the east and spreading the game.
There are several regional variations. Traditional Forty Fives goes to a score of 45 points, hence the name of the game. In the Auction Forty Fives variant the score goes to 120 points and requires bidding. In many areas outside of Canada, Auction Forty Fives is simply referred to as Forty Fives. Although the number 45 has no relevance to Auction Forty Fives, the name persisted. Auction Forty Fives is closely related to the game One-hundred and ten.
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This entry incorporates text from “Forty-fives” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.