Five Crowns Score Sheet

What is on the Five Crowns score sheet?

The rounds are labelled by what is wild in them. Instead of eleven lines numbered one to eleven, the sheet reads 3s, 4s, 5s and on to Kings — which is the thing people at the table actually ask halfway through the evening.

Type each player’s leftovers as a round ends and the totals keep themselves. The lowest total is marked in amber.

What are the cards worth at the end of a round?

Jokers cost 50 and the round’s wild card costs 20. That is the tension the whole game runs on: the cards that make your hand are the cards that ruin your score if the hand does not come together in time.

Everything else is straightforward — kings 13, queens 12, jacks 11, and every number card its own value. Whoever goes out first writes a zero.

Which card is wild in each round?

Round one deals three cards and the threes are wild. Round two deals four and the fours are wild. It carries on like that to round eleven, where you hold thirteen cards and every king on the table is wild.

The effect is that the game gets easier and harder at the same time — more wild cards to work with, but more cards to get rid of, and a bigger pile of points if somebody else goes out first.

Can you play Five Crowns with ordinary cards?

Worth knowing before you plan a game night around it: Five Crowns uses its own pack of 116 cards in five suits — the usual four plus stars — running from three up to king, with jokers. No standard pack of playing cards will do, and there is no way to improvise the fifth suit.

If you have a plain deck and want something similar, Rummy is the closest relative and its sheet is here too.

How to print a blank Five Crowns score sheet

Choose Blank sheets and print one, two or three pages, on A4 or US Letter. Every sheet carries all eleven rounds with their wild cards named, six player columns and the card values underneath.

Five Crowns scoring: questions people ask

How many rounds is a game of Five Crowns? Eleven. The first deals three cards with the threes wild, and every round afterwards adds one card and moves the wild up a rank — ending on the eleventh with thirteen cards and the kings wild.

Which card is wild in each round? The one matching the hand size: threes, fours, fives, sixes, sevens, eights, nines, tens, then jacks, queens and kings. This sheet labels every row with its wild card instead of a number, so the table never has to count back.

What is each card worth if I am caught with it? Jokers 50 and the round's wild card 20 — the two most useful cards are the two most expensive to be holding. Kings 13, queens 12, jacks 11, and every number card its own face value.

What does the player who goes out score? Zero. Everybody else counts what is still in their hand once the round ends, which is what goes in the boxes.

Does the highest or lowest total win? The lowest, after all eleven rounds. The sheet marks the smallest total in amber as you go.

Can I use an ordinary pack of cards? No — Five Crowns has its own deck of 116 cards in five suits, stars included, running from three to king. That fifth suit is the whole point of the game, and no standard pack has one.

Playing something else tonight? There are score sheets for Canasta, Rummy, Hearts and Chicken Foot here too.