How to Play Spoons With Your Friends and Have a Blast!

Learn how to play Spoons and beat others with your reactivity skills. The Spoons Card Game will be a great addition to your gathering with friends or family. Everyone has a couple of spoons in their drawer, so it should be playable anywhere.

The objective is to collect a set of four identical cards, after which everyone rushes to claim a spoon. The unfortunate player without a spoon receives a letter. The ultimate winner is the one who avoids spelling out “spoons” the longest.

It’s perfect for larger groups, as it can be played with 3 to 13 players. In this guide, we will guide you through the gameplay so that you can start playing right away!

What do you need?

• A standard deck of cards, without jokers
• Spoons: one less than the total number of players. So, if you’re with 11 players, you should have 10 spoons.

Got everything you need? Let’s continue with the games’ setup.

The Setup

Before setting up, it should be determined who will deal the cards. After each game round, the dealer role shifts to the player to their left. Here’s how you setup the game:

1. Choose a flat surface to play on. Ideally, this would be a table, but you could also play it on the ground.
2. Let all players form a circle around the table or playing field.
3. Lay down all the spoons in the middle of the playing field in a row.
   • Arrange the distance between the spoons so that all players can reach at least one spoon.
4. Hand out four cards to each player.
5. Place the rest of the deck on the table.

That’s all! Let’s continue with the gameplay below as the last part on learning how to play spoons!

How Do You Play Spoons?

• At the start of every round, the dealer draws a card from the deck, now holding five cards.

• All players then simultaneously pass one card face-down to the player to their left.

• The last player, who’s sitting to the right of the dealer, discards their card onto the discard pile instead of passing it to the dealer.
  • This concludes one round.

• The previous steps repeat until one person manages to get four of a kind:
  • The first player to get four of the same cards grabs a spoon.
  • All other players follow by grabbing a spoon as quickly as possible.

• As there are not enough spoons for all players, one player cannot grab a spoon.

• The loser receives a letter in the following order: S-P-O-O-N.
  • When a player has all five letters, they are eliminated from the game.

• The last person remaining wins the game!

Spoons Rules

There are some rules that everyone should know to keep the game fun and fair for all players:

• The spoons should be placed in such a way that all players can reach as many spoons as possible.
• If a player gets a hold of a spoon, it is theirs. Don’t claim another person’s spoon by force.
• After each game, the role of dealer is passed to the player left of the dealer.

Final Words on How to Play Spoons

Now that you know how to play spoons, you can easily introduce this game anywhere and have a blast with whoever joins in.

We advise you to play this game on a surface that doesn’t damage easily. The grabbing of the spoons can get a bit rough, and you don’t want your new shiny table to get damaged. To prevent this, we would advise using a tablecloth or any other type of protective layer.

After playing this game for a while, it might be a good idea to switch to a different card game. The Horse Race Game could be a fun but totally different alternative.

If you’re looking for something else, feel free to check out any of our other how-to guides! There’s a fun game for every occasion.

Have fun!