Uno unhinged

January 27, 2025

Uno unhinged

in praise of individual Uno rules

The cards are shuffled. The snacks are ready. The lights are bright enough for everyone to see the colors. You are ready to win. But then, one of your friends asks the dreaded question, the one that is inevitably going to lead to a long discussion. "Are you allowed to play directly after you drew a card?" As always, this is going to start a long discussion about which rules you are going to play with. This dreaded conversation, the fight over which rules are better, it doesn't have to be that intense. Because now there is UNO unhinged.

Uno has a lot of rules. Only a few of them are official¹, some are official house rules², some are only available in some special versions of Uno³, some require special cards⁴ (while others add new functions to existing cards) and some are just made up. Which rules you play with is fully up to you, some rules make it more child-friendly, some rules add a little twist and some rules draw the rounds close to infinity. And which rules you are playing with is almost always a topic for debate.

The rules of Uno always lead to a debate. Some people like to play in a more competetive way while others just like to have a lighthearted round of laying cards while talking about something else. Some people have played so much Unio that they want a changeup of the usual while others like to be reminded of the childhood games they played with their families.