Ninehole: 9 Card Golf

Nine cards. Nine holes. Lowest score wins. Ninehole is nine-card golf — the game you have played at a kitchen table with a borrowed deck and a scrap of paper for the scores — dealt, scored and remembered for you. Everyone gets nine cards, face down in a 3x3 grid. On your turn you draw the top of the deck or take the top of the discard, then swap it into your grid face up, or throw it away and turn one of your own cards over. Take the discard and you must swap it in; there is no throwing it back. Nobody sees a face-down card. Not even the person it belongs to. WHAT THE CARDS COST Number cards are worth their face value. Ace 1. Jack 15. King 0. Joker -2. A queen is 25, and the table gasps when one turns up. Three of a kind down a column scores zero, which is the only way to make a bad card good — and the host can let rows cancel as well. GOING OUT The first player to turn all nine cards…