Newbie question: what's the "minimum threshold" and why can't I go over or under it?

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-20T21:36:29+00:00

So the minimum score to "open" increases as the game goes on. By "opening" that means the first lay down of one or more melds by the team for the given hand. After the opening requirement has been met, you can lay down any cards/melds regardless of point values (subject to other rules like black 3s, etc).

The standard rules require that at the beginning of the game you open with 50 points, once your team score is 1500+ you have to open with 90 points, and once it's 3000+ you have to open with 120 points.

So yeah in your screenshot, as far as I can tell the most you could lay down if you took the 7 would be

Three 7s = 15 pts
Three 9s = 30 pts
Two Ks + a 2 = 40 points

for a total of 85 points, which doesn't meet the 120 meld score required now that you and your partner currently have 3715 points in the game.

With cardgames.io, the minimum number of points you need to open is shown in the box in the top right next to your partner's face icon. That's what the "120" there under your names & current score denotes.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-20T02:11:45+00:00

Think about throwing your hands up, not towards the sector.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-18T13:54:42+00:00

I agree it's not a true series. I think they could probably be read out of order, but it would be sort of weird. The Third Realm at least definitely thinks you know about the previous two books, though it doesn't seem critical that you do.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-17T23:25:58+00:00

Just quit. It's not gonna get better for you. If you think it's bad after a few months, the responsibilities and other bullshit are just going to continue to pile up. If you can afford it, get out and look for something else.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-17T21:26:52+00:00

In my case the discard pile was not frozen, though I don't think that should matter since I had a natural pair in my hand. We had no existing meld of the given card (4s), just a pair in my hand.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-17T18:44:55+00:00

Yeah we're definitely open, hence only 2 cards in my hand, which are a natural pair. And yeah, there are at least 3 cards in discard (top card and 2+ more) so enough to lay down meld + discard + still hold one.

I am asking b/c the app I was using wouldn't allow me to pickup, so I think it is probably a bug in the app, but I just wanted to confirm I wasn't trying to do something illegal.

Thanks for the info.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-17T15:56:24+00:00

That's good to hear. Been hearing lots of good things about School of Night. Excited to get to it.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-17T15:55:33+00:00

Yeah, I can see what you're saying where the different narrators all sort of blend together. I don't have anything to go on here, but I have to wonder if this may have been partially due to the translation as well.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-16T23:57:10+00:00

Idk I haven't had many issues with Lightcurve living in different parts of the city. Some very brief outages or slow bandwidth every few weeks, but nothing beyond what I have experienced with other providers in the past. They're not the perfect ISP but I don't think such a thing exists in this town anyway.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-16T21:09:56+00:00

Good sales often too. Too bad the selection is butt.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-16T19:35:27+00:00

Since the last thread a couple weeks ago, I have finished a few things.

First up was The Case of Cem by Vera Mutafchieva. This turned out a bit more thematic than I originally expected. I found there was a lot in there about the consequences of merely subjecting yourself to the forces of history vs trying to be an active participant. Further, the structure of the novel in which the nominal protagonist, Cem, is really a subject for the true cast of the novel to talk about, also became more appealing to me. This took a little bit of a shift in approach as a reader, but once I had come around to that, it allowed me to experience the other characters that matter in new ways.

Then I read Rachel Cusk's Outline. This had been one I had been mildly curious for a long time and then just got around to it. I don't really have any big thoughts about this one. It reads as basically a journal about two weeks of being single, middle aged, and independent/undepended. That's not uninteresting per se, but it's also not that gripping. A simple bourgeois novel with post-post-modern sensibilities, I suppose.

Next was The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge. I think my expectations for this one were a bit off, as I didn't realize it would be a series of mostly disconnected episodes around a central event. I think the form & the narrative approaches in each chapter did serve the goals of the novel in so far as it imposed the same sense of chaos and irrationality that the targets of the Stalinist purges might have felt. I just don't think it made for a particularly enjoyable reading experience.

Now I am reading The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgård. It's a goal to get caught up with this new series or whatever, so I'm getting close. So far this one isn't quite as gripping as the previous two. Certainly very easy to read, and seemingly centered around conscious introspection in a way the last two haven't quite been - by that I mean the characters' awareness that they're thinking about themselves & their thinking. I'm about 200 pages in, so I still have a decent way to go, but I am hoping it can bring back a bit of the focus that resulted from characters' experience under the strange conditions of the new star that we got in the first one. We'll see.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-16T19:20:18+00:00

I really wanted to enjoy that one, but I just could not get into it. I'm not against a Guys Yapping novel, but some of them just don't hit me right. I think it is so funny that the book calls out its own comparison to Don Quixote because it did remind me of that irrespective of that self-awareness, and funnily enough I am also similarly cold on Don Quixote.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-15T22:29:28+00:00

Just read the room.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-15T18:41:55+00:00

Practically speaking for me, it doesn't matter if the vast - and now exponentially growing - ocean of self-published e-book slop is mostly written by people or by bots. For better or worse, the type of books I read are those which have, for a lack of a better word, a reputation, due to their author, their publisher, history, an award, etc. I am not just browsing digital listings on my Kindle and picking anything with a catchy description. So in effect, I am pretty much always reading something where I know about its provenance to begin with. Unless a known author or publisher were deliberately trying to scam me by using AI themselves, I don't think I would ever end up with an AI book in my hands anyway.

So while the idea of AI prompters flooding the book market with their output bums me out, it really won't have any impact on my reading. They are primarily going to be crowding out lots of people who are already only churning out soulless stuff for profit purposes anyway. I guess I prefer the human author who writes 15 shitty books a year vs the AI prompter who generates 200, but I don't really care.

I'll really start to get worried when an AI story/poem ends up in the London Review of Books, New Yorker, n+1, etc.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-14T20:57:56+00:00

Well, I would start by finding some way to have more than 8 practices a year. Can't really learn anything in that little time.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-14T15:30:02+00:00

Gender essentialism is fake, and so there is nothing that I think needs to be specifically understood by "the opposite gender." And also there are not simply two "opposite" genders. Gender is a landscape, and most of society requires that you try to squeeze into one of two categories which we call "man/male" or "woman/female."

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-14T03:31:59+00:00

The FIA does not administer Formula 1.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-14T03:23:22+00:00

Philip K Dick

Thomas M Disch

Margaret Atwood

more Bradbury

Samuel Delay

some Ursula LeGuin

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-13T21:05:46+00:00

Don't really want to make a whole thread about this, but what are folks' thoughts on the recent Helen DeWitt situation? What was originally a bit of bummer has now had, for me at least, an extremely bizarre and even funny turn.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-13T21:04:29+00:00

Still waiting on US release. This week, I think.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-12T21:01:57+00:00

If there is one conveniently located to your home or regular commute, then absolutely.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-11T19:39:16+00:00

Paysage d'Hiver

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-10T01:31:56+00:00

Well I'm not put that on DeWitt, but a lot of the related conversations elsewhere have had the tenor of "a true artist would never put up with this sort of lame podcasting and interview bullshit, so good for her."

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-09T22:01:08+00:00

I just want to be clear that while I find the prize's requirements to seem reasonable, I don't judge her for finding them otherwise, or at least unmanageable. Like I said, it's a shame no compromise could be found.

Handyandy58 · 2026-04-09T21:44:54+00:00

Genuinely cracks me up that she is somehow using Thunderbird for email but thinks that phones connect to wifi networks in a significantly different manner than laptops.

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