Early this winter, our daughter brought home something she picked up in school that went on to infect the entire household.

Symptoms included lingering for hours at the dining room table; bursts of mean-spirited laughter; random acts of mercy and revenge; and the occasional loud and inappropriate celebration.

What this thing was, exactly, I wasn’t sure until I looked it up on the Internet. All she could say about it was that she’d picked it up at lunchtime, along with a few other ones like it.

Thanks to Google and Wikipedia, I now know what we’ve been dealing with — if not by exact name, then at least by its pathology: a shedding-type variant of the Finnish Paskahousu, known in the United States as…

Hm. Slight technical problem here, this being a family newspaper and all. The name of this game starts with a common vulgarism, which is often represented in print with an asterisk. Which I would be happy to employ, but I happen to know that doing so would put Susan Marcus, who reads these columns out loud for Vision Resources of Central PA, in the impossible position of either saying the nasty word whenever she encounters an asterisk, or voicing the word “asterisk,” which just seems silly.

So, in deference to Susan, I’m simply going to substitute a similar-sounding word and leave the rest to your imagination.

We’ll call the game “Shout-head.” And just to get it out of my system, let me add that the Finnish version translates as “Shout pants,” and includes many variations, such as “Bull-shout,” “Fake shout,” “Table shout,” and — my personal favorite, whose name seems to reflect a little-known Nordic rivalry — “Swedish shout pants.”

Just to be crystal clear, I’m talking about a card game.

Shout-head belongs to the “shedding game” category, meaning that the goal is to get rid of all of your cards. This is in contrast to trick-taking games like bridge; matching games like rummy; accumulating games like War; comparing games like poker or blackjack; or patience games like Solitaire.
Each player in Shout-head is dealt three cards, face down; followed by three cards, face up; and then three more cards, which are considered the “hand.” Play can proceed either clockwise or counter-clockwise.

(Quick sidebar: the traditional direction of play in most of Asia and South America is counterclockwise; in America and Australia, it’s clockwise; and Europe is divided into mostly clockwise in the north and mostly counter-clockwise in the south. Why? Who knows?)

The first player lays down a card, and then each subsequent player has to lay down a card of equal or higher value.

But there are wildcards! A two, for instance, lets you “reset” the pile, so the next player can put down any card she likes. A ten acts as a “bomb” and causes the stack of cards underneath to be removed from play. A seven forces the next player to put down a seven or lower.

If you can’t lay down a higher card — or, in the case of a seven, a lower one — then you have to take the pile.

Your goal is to get rid of your cards. Your opponents’ goal is to make you take a huge stack of difficult-to-play, low value cards.

If you manage to get rid of all the cards in your hand, you then get to play the three face-up cards that have been staring at you the whole time. And, if you’re lucky enough to get through those, you move on to the last three face-down cards. These are often heartbreakers, since you have to play them without any idea of their value.

Shout-head is a maddening, fun, scheming kind of game, with tactical decisions at each turn: do I play my high-value card, or save it for later? Do I take the pile, which is heavy with high-value cards, or bomb it with a ten? Do I force the player next to me to take the pile, or wait one more turn to do the dirty deed?

I played my fair share of card games when I was growing up. I especially liked the physical ones that involved hand-slapping. Shout-hand is more cerebral than the games I remember, but it suits a quiet winter evening — especially when supplemented with a glass of red wine and perhaps a bit of chocolate.

In an age of passive entertainments, card games remind us of a time when leisure was more social, and there was plenty of fun to be had in amiably sticking it to your beloved family members.

But be forewarned: Shout-hand can get pretty rowdy. Asterisks may fly.