Chem Rummy (1974)

Here is another super rare card game I have kept since I was a kid.  My dad was a chemistry teacher, so I have always had an interest in molecules and all the possible combinations of elements, and the ongoing research that pushes the boundaries of new types of chemicals.

Here is Chem Rummy, from Addison-Wesley, 1974.  It's not even mentioned on BoardGameGeek, and I have no idea how many were printed or if they are still available.  I never could get another player to sit down and build chemical formulas with me, but the idea was to play exactly like gin rummy: draw and discard cards until you can lay down your whole hand of cards as a valid set of molecules.

But I always played it like regular solitaire: make the seven piles of one to seven cards, play and move the cards exactly as in regular solitaire, turn the extra cards three at a time, and see how many combos I can make before the cards run out.  With this deck, you do eventually end up with just number cards and no valid builds.  

Here are the results of one round of solitaire:

The goal is to add up the weights of all the molecules made, which can be pretty tedious for more than the usual seven cards hands.  It's good to teach students how to add the weights of the elements to get the molecular weights, sure, but let's ignore the decimal points for a simple game.  After all, the fractional weights only exist because they are the averages of all the different isotopic weights and distributions in nature.  Let's just let these be one single isotope with an integer weight.

The scoring, while educational, is wildly imbalanced, with cards ranging from Hydrogen (1) to Mercury (200.6).  Mercury iodide (HgI, 200+127 = 337) is the highest scoring combo with just two cards, and barium iodide (BaI2, 137+127*2 = 391) is probably the best score of any valid molecule.

This was just a little something from my collection of unusual decks of cards that I wanted to share.