Vint

Reading notes

• Hopeless (A Sketch) §21 vint

  A nineteenth-century Russian card game, forerunner of bridge, a staple pastime of provincial gentry evenings.

• Ionych §109 played vint

  Vint was a nineteenth-century Russian card game, a forerunner of bridge; Startsev's nightly hours at it come to stand for the whole of his social life in town.

• Ivanov §539 We played vint all night

  Vint (винт) was a 19th-century Russian trick-taking card game, a forerunner of bridge, commonly played for money and a byword for idle gentry gambling. Kosykh's entire personality in the play is organized around vint -- his opening entrance and several later scenes consist of him narrating hands in obsessive, jargon-thick detail ("no trumps," "small slam," "grand slam") to listeners who are visibly not interested, one of the play's running comic bits about provincial boredom filling itself with trivial obsession.

• Revenge §1 playing vint

  Vint (винт) was a 19th-century Russian trick-taking card game, a direct forerunner of bridge, immensely popular in the middle- and upper-class household party circuit of the era -- the ordinary social setting from which Turmanov steps away and, through a wall, overhears his wife's assignation being arranged.

• An Unpleasantness §67 vint

  A nineteenth-century Russian card game, a forerunner of contract bridge, popular among the provincial gentry and officialdom -- the game the doctor is on his way to play with the military recruiting officer when the feldsher arrives to apologize.

• On June and July §26 vint

  A 19th-century Russian card game, a forerunner of bridge, here listed among Jupiter's very unheavenly human vices.

• A Failure of Compensation §31 vint player

  A nineteenth-century Russian card game and forerunner of bridge, commonly played with a 'dummy' hand when only three were at the table. Being called a passionate player of it marks the engineer as a fixture of the summer-visitor social round.

• An Event §46 sits down to play vint

  Vint (винт) -- a 19th-century Russian card game and forerunner of bridge -- was the standard evening card game of the educated household; Papa's absorption in it is what finally gives the children their chance to smuggle Nero into the kitchen unnoticed.

• Vint §20 vint

  Vint ("screw"), a nineteenth-century Russian trick-taking card game and forerunner of bridge; the title's pun is that what the clerks are actually playing only resembles it.