Egyptian Rat Screw

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Glossary of Egyptian Rat Screw Terms

Card games collect their own shorthand, and this site adds a few terms of its own for its Egyptian modes and reflex metrics. Here is every word you will meet at the table or in the menus, in alphabetical order.

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Classic tabletop terms

  • Attacker. The player who laid the most recent face card (Jack, Queen, King or Ace), forcing the next player in turn to answer with a face card of their own.
  • Bottom hand. In a physical game, the hand resting directly on the cards when two or more players slap at once. The bottom hand wins the pile.
  • Burn / Burn card. The penalty for slapping the pile when no valid pattern is present, or for letting your turn clock run out. One card from your deck is placed in a separate penalty pile and goes to whoever wins the current centre pile.
  • Centre pile. The face-up stack of cards in the middle of the table that players build on their turns and race to collect by slapping or winning a challenge.
  • Challenge (Face-card challenge). The sequence triggered when a player lays a Jack (1 chance), Queen (2 chances), King (3 chances) or Ace (4 chances). If the defender does not turn up a face card within their allotted chances, the attacker takes the pile.
  • Defender. The player currently trying to answer a face-card challenge by flipping a Jack, Queen, King or Ace before their chances run out.
  • Doubles. Two consecutive cards of the same rank on top of the pile, such as 7♣ 7♥. One of the four classic slap patterns.
  • Four in a Row. An optional house-rule pattern: four consecutive cards on top of the pile that climb or fall by one rank each step, such as 4♠ 5♦ 6♣ 7♥ or K♥ Q♣ J♦ 10♠.
  • House rules. Optional slap patterns or penalty rules agreed on before a match begins. See the house rules guide.
  • Marriage. A King and a Queen adjacent to each other on top of the pile in either order (K♠ Q♥ or Q♦ K♣). One of the four classic slap patterns.
  • Number cards. Cards ranked 2 through 10. Only number cards can form a Tens pattern.
  • Sandwich. Two cards of the same rank separated by a single card of any rank on top of the pile, such as 9♣ 3♥ 9♦. One of the four classic slap patterns.
  • Slap back in (Slap-in). Winning a pile by slapping a valid pattern after you have run out of cards, bringing you back into the turn order with the cards you just won.
  • Tens. Two number cards on top of the pile whose ranks add up to exactly 10, such as 3♠ 7♦ or 4♣ 6♥. One of the four classic slap patterns.
  • Top-Bottom. An optional house-rule pattern where the card just played has the same rank as the very first card laid at the bottom of the current pile.
  • Triple. An optional house-rule pattern requiring three cards of the same rank in a row. Useful only at tables where Doubles are switched off.

Features and modes on this site

  • Ascension (I, II, III). Three harder solo tiers unlocked for each god at the Table of the Gods once you defeat it. Higher tiers increase the god's life by 25, 50 and 75 percent and quicken its reaction window.
  • Bot personalities (Blitz, Chaos, Viper). The three AI seat styles. Blitz reacts quickly and bluffs often; Chaos has a wide, unpredictable reaction range; Viper is patient and rarely makes a false slap.
  • Combustion Shield. A 30-second shield earned by landing three valid slaps in a row. Each additional valid slap refreshes the timer. If you make a wrong slap while shielded, the shield shatters instead of burning a card from your deck.
  • Daily Challenge. A seeded mid-match scenario, the same for every player in the world on a given day, played on the four classic patterns at that day's difficulty, with any personal setting that would change the score overridden.
  • Duat Journey. A Legends mode where you start with zero cards against three shades (Ba, Ka and Akh) and have three ankhs and ten rounds to slap back in and survive the twelve hours of the night.
  • Fast Slap. A celebration the game shows, in matches against the bots, when you win a pile with a slap made less than 400 milliseconds after the card landed.
  • Ghost Cards. Spectral copies of slapped cards given to a god at the Table of the Gods after it takes slap damage — up to six per slap, and never more than thirteen held at once. Ghosts can form patterns and challenges, but vanish when a pile is collected.
  • Perfect Slap. A celebration the game shows when a winning slap lands within 15 pixels of the exact centre of the pile.
  • Pharaoh's Tomb. A one-on-one Legends mode across seven chambers where your next three cards are face up, you choose which to play, and only a pattern the guardian's card completes may be slapped: a pattern your own card completes is the tomb's trap, and slapping it burns a card.
  • Senet (The Game of Passing). A Legends mode combining ERS piles with ancient Egypt's thirty-square board game: every pile won advances a piece along the board, with rarer slap patterns moving further.
  • Slap IQ. A report on your slapping, not a trainer: how often your slaps are right, how many of the patterns that appeared you caught, and how fast you were, combined into one score out of 100 once enough slaps are recorded.
  • Table of the Gods. A co-operative or solo Legends mode where three seats team up to bring a god's life to zero by landing slaps, while contending with each god's unique rule (Bastet, Thoth, Hathor, Anubis, Set and Ra).

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