Aluette

Aluette

2 of Cups (the cow) from a 19th-century deck
Origin	France
Alternative names	Luettes, La Vache
Type	Trick-taking
Players	2-4
Skills required	Tactics, Strategy
Cards	48
Deck	Spanish (modified)
Play	Clockwise
Playing time	45 min.
Random chance	Moderate
Related games
Put, Truc, Truco

Aluette is a plain trick-taking card game played usually by four people divided into two teams. It is played in rural and coastal areas in France between the Gironde and Loire estuary, that is to say, in the western part of the area of influence of Saintonge and Poitou dialect. It is wrongly presented as a folk and specific game in the Vendée department. It seems still practiced in the south-western part of the Loire-Atlantique called Retz. It is also practiced at family gatherings, at St Nazaire, city where we also played in cafes around 1960. At that time, there still were playing around the Brière and Guerande peninsula. It was much played in the ports of the Cotentin, where this game has disappeared.

This game is apparently very old with references to the game of "luettes" by François Rabelais in the early 16th century. As the cards use Spanish suits, it may even predate the invention of French playing cards around 1480. "La luette" means uvula in French and may refer to the fact that it is played with codified signs that allow team members to provide information on their cards during the game. The game is also called "la vache" (the cow) because of the illustration on the 2 of cups card. Due to similarities it has with the game of truc, aluette may have been imported by Spanish merchants.

Aluette uses a unique deck of 48 Spanish playing cards where certain pip cards depict figures to show that they outrank their face value. These figures provide the card with their nicknames and are associated with certain gestures players pass to their teammate. The card ranks are as follows:

The "Luettes":

The "Doubles":

The "Figures":

The "Bigailles": The remaining pip cards from the Nines of Swords and Clubs to the Threes of Swords and Clubs. The Five of Coins also includes a depiction of a couple kissing (believed to represent the Catholic Monarchs) and the traditional signal is to "kiss hard" but it has no special value.

Many of the illustrations on aluette decks appeared in other early Spanish packs but have since disappeared like the six-pointed stars on the Four of Coins.

Grimaud, a subsidiary of Cartamundi's France Cartes, is the only producer of Aluette decks in the present. Since 1998, cards have included the nicknames, hinting gestures, and game ranking indices on their cards.