The History of Cribbage: Who Invented It, and When?

By tradition, cribbage emerged in England in the early 1600s, evolving from an older card game called Noddy. Tradition credits the invention to the poet Sir John Suckling (1609–1642), but that credit rests on a single piece of posthumous hearsay. The word's earliest appearance in print is itself given differently by different authorities.

What is cribbage?

Cribbage is a card game for two players, played with a standard 52-card pack. Each player is dealt six cards and discards two face down to form the crib, a four-card extra hand that belongs to the dealer and is counted last. Players score points for card combinations, both during the play and in the count afterward, and peg those points on a board with four rows of 30 holes.

The first player to reach 121 points, twice around the board, wins immediately in any phase of the game. The full deal, play, and count loop is taught step by step in how to play cribbage.

Where did cribbage come from?

Cribbage descends from Noddy, an older English card game. The games historian David Parlett calls Noddy the knavish ancestor of cribbage, dates its life from the 1550s to the 1850s, and cites 1589 as the earliest reference to the game in the Oxford English Dictionary. Cribbage itself is traditionally supposed to date from the early 1600s, also in England.

Noddy, as Parlett reconstructs it (chiefly from Francis Willughby's Book of Plaies, written around 1665), already looks familiar. Two players used a 52-card pack, were dealt three cards each, and turned up an extra card after the deal. They scored fifteens, pairs, runs, and flushes, both in hand and during the play, and pegged their points to 31 on a 31-hole noddy board.

The running total of the play was capped at 31, with a "Go" for a player who could not stay under it. Almost everything a modern player would recognize was already on the table.

What did cribbage add to Noddy?

The scoring combinations, the 31 cap, the pegging, and the turned-up card were all in place before cribbage existed. What Parlett's Noddy shows no trace of is the crib, the discard hand the dealer counts last. The etymologies point at exactly that gap: the Oxford English Dictionary derives "cribbage" from "crib", and Douglas Harper writes that the game is probably named for the crib. Harper also notes that "crib" in the card sense is attested later than the game name, so the derivation is not fully settled. On that evidence, the crib looks like cribbage's distinctive addition, the feature the game is named for.

Even the jack points predate cribbage. In Noddy the jack of the turned-up suit was called Knave Noddy: holding it scored 1, and if it was the turned-up card itself, the non-dealer scored 2. Cribbage keeps both scores as one for his nobs and two for his heels, though the heels points go to the dealer. The parallel is plain, whatever the exact path of the words.

Did Sir John Suckling invent cribbage?

Tradition says yes; the evidence is one paragraph of hearsay. The claim comes from John Aubrey's Brief Lives, biographical notes set down between 1669 and 1696, decades after Suckling died. Aubrey, citing a Mr. William Beeston, writes that Suckling "invented the game of cribbidge". In the same note he reports that Suckling sent packs of cards, marked "with private markes of his", to gaming places around the country, and won £20,000 by the trick.

Aubrey's Suckling was at least the right man for the story. He records that Suckling "playd at cards rarely well" and practised alone in bed, studying the best way of managing the cards. Aubrey adds that Suckling's sisters once came to the bowling green in tears, afraid he would gamble away their portions.

None of this is a contemporary record. James Masters, of the Online Guide to Traditional Games, notes there is no hard evidence for the invention story, which traditionally has Suckling inventing the game after 1632. The honest verdict is that the attribution rests entirely on Aubrey's posthumous note, and nothing yet found either confirms it or rules it out.

When was cribbage invented?

Cribbage is traditionally supposed to date from the early 1600s, but the word's paper trail starts later, and the authorities who date it do not agree. No single "first recorded" year deserves to be printed on its own.

The disagreement matters because of the Suckling story. On Masters' numbers, the word was in print by 1630, before the traditional post-1632 invention window opens, and that mismatch is his stated reason for doubt. The OED's current 1641 date falls within Suckling's lifetime, 1609–1642 per the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, which removes that particular objection without confirming Aubrey in any way. Harper's 1620s would strain the post-1632 telling again. None of these dates proves or disproves Suckling; together they prove only that the game was in print by the 1640s at the latest.

Why did five-card cribbage become six-card?

The original game was five-card cribbage: five cards dealt to each player, two of them discarded to a four-card crib, and a game of just 61 points. The non-dealer pegged 3 as compensation on the first deal only. The six-card game nearly everyone plays today, with six cards dealt and a target of 121, displaced it.

The sourced record bounds the shift rather than dating it. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica reports that the five-card game had formerly been considered the more scientific form, and that opinion had by then reversed in favour of six-card play. Today six-card cribbage has almost entirely replaced the original, though the five-card game survives in parts of Britain, including South Wales pub leagues and reported games in Hampshire and Surrey.

How did cribbage spread?

In England, cribbage settled in as a pub game. The card-game reference pagat.com notes it is one of the few games allowed by statute to be played in a public house for small stakes. The same reference lists six-card cribbage's territory today as Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

The sea carried it further. The National Endowment for the Humanities' Humanities magazine calls cribbage a longtime favorite of seamen, repeating the traditional Suckling origin along the way. The magazine also features a 19th-century cribbage board carved from walrus tusk, part of a whaleship exhibition at the Martha's Vineyard Museum. Sailors could carve a board, and a board is all the game needs beyond a pack of cards.

Why does the US Navy pass down a cribbage board?

The US Navy's submarine force keeps a cribbage tradition of its own, told in official Navy media. During an April 1943 patrol of the submarine USS Wahoo, Commander Dudley "Mush" Morton dealt his executive officer, Richard "Dick" O'Kane, a perfect 29 hand. The odds of a 29 from a six-card deal are 1 in 216,580. The next day Wahoo sank two Japanese freighters, and the hand passed into submarine-force legend.

The tradition the hand left behind is concrete. The O'Kane cribbage board is handed down to the oldest fast-attack submarine in the Pacific Fleet, and it has passed through USS Kamehameha, Parche, Los Angeles, Bremerton, Olympia, and Chicago.

Who organizes cribbage today?

The American Cribbage Congress, a non-profit established in 1980, organizes competitive cribbage in the modern game's heartland. It sanctions hundreds of tournaments a year across North America and runs weekly local clubs through its Grass Roots program. Sanctioned tournament play is the two-handed game to 121, pegged on long boards with sixty holes up and sixty back. Whoever first pushed two cards into a crib, the game they left behind has outgrown every question about its origin.

By the Nobs Cribbage team Last reviewed 2026-08-10