Idiot, the game

M taught us a new card game this weekend that he learned at Scout camp this summer.  They call it Idiot and evidently they played it a lot over that week.  Actually, he taught us how to play just after camp, but I had forgotten some of the rules.  He had played it enough that he remembers them, though.  It's a fun game and generally a fairly quick game, at least if you don't try to play out to all the places.  We've been playing for 1st and 2nd place only.

Rules: (this works for 4 people playing, you might need to change the number of cards with a different number of people)

Deal out 4 cards face down to each person.  On top of each of face down card, put a card face up.  Then deal 4 cards to each person's hand.  The rest of the cards go in a stack in the middle of the table.

The goal is to get rid of all of your cards.  You have to play an equal or higher value card on top of what is in the discard pile.  If you have multiple of the same number card, you can play them all at once.

2, 4, 10 and joker are wild.  Ace is high.

2 and 4 can be played anytime and will "reset" the discard pile, think of them as being a zero, every other card is higher than them

10 can be played anytime and will "burn" the deck - take the discard pile out of play and you get to play another card to start a new discard pile

joker can be played anytime.  The very next card to be played must be LOWER than the card previous to the joker.

First person starts off with any card from their hand (they will probably want to start with their lowest card).  Then they take a card from the deck.  Next person does the same, playing any card from their hand that is equal to or higher than the top of the discard pile.  If you can't play a card from your hand, you pick up the entire discard pile (and do not have to take a card from the deck).  Soon you will run out of the deck, that's ok.

Once you have played all the cards in your hand, you can start in on the cards face-up in front of you.  Once those are done, you start playing the face-down cards - blindly!  At this point you are very likely to end up picking up the discard pile at some point.  If, at any point, you pick up the discard pile, all cards go into your hand (with the exception of face down cards, which goes back face-down) and you have to empty your hand again before you can use any cards down in front of you.