One of the games that we played when I was growing up was Dutch Blitz. I remember the first time that I saw the game being played at my Great Aunt Esther’s house. Of course, we soon had our own copy of the game. We spent many hours playing this beautiful and simple card game. My sister and I especially had a lot of fun beating our slow fingered aunts.
The game was developed by Werner Ernst George Muller to help his children learn about colors and numbers. Muller was a German immigrant to Pennsylvania and the game spread through the Pennsylvania Dutch communities in Pennsylvania and across the country. My Amish and Mennonite cousins all played the game.
So, what is so great about Dutch Blitz? The poem on the cover of the box sums it up.
Since it may be hard to read in the picture, here is the first stanza:
A VONDERFUL GOOT GAME!
Dutch Blitz is such vonderful goot fun
For young folks – and old vones too.
Vhy you should see the vones who pays:
They gets in such a stew.
The cards for Dutch Blitz come in four colors.
The yellow and green cards have a Pennsylvania Dutch Girl in each corner and the blue and red cards have a Pennsylvania Dutch Boy.
Each deck has ten cards numbered one through ten in each color. A set of Dutch Blitz cards has four decks of colored cards. The backs of each deck have markings that are associated with the Pennsylvania Dutch.
Each of the players chooses a deck of cards. I usually played with the pumps, as green is my favorite color. My sister would play with the plows.
The game is similar to the game Nertz, a combination of Solitaire and Speed. I will not attempt to give all the rules here. You can visit the Dutch Blitz website for the rules. You can also get information at the site about where you can buy your own set of Dutch Blitz cards.
So warm up your fingers and get ready to play!
Steven
p.s. Do you have a favorite game from when you were growing up?
Braman's Wanderings 
Mine was backgammon – I was addicted! 🙂
We would play checkers with my Grampa when we were really little. I’m sure he’d let us win sometimes. Later as pre-teens I remember playing Monopoly and Clue a lot. I’d always guess the murderer too soon…no patience HA
Watching a truly fast Dutch Blitz player was an amazing sight.
Another card game that I liked was Authors. It may deserve a post as well :-).
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I didn’t realize Dutch Blitz was old. It’s one of my favorite games currently – definitely my favorite card game. We’ve modified it for five players and it still works great.
You have me wondering how it can be played with five players. We would sometimes play as teams, especially if we had some younger players.
We have two sets. We took all of the wheelbarrows from the second set, marked them on the back so we could tell them apart from the first set’s wheelbarrows, and just added them to the first set as a fifth card type.
Oh and I see from looking at your pictures that by “wheelbarrows” I meant “buckets”. I forgot what the yellow farm implement was.
We played Dutch Blitz with our kids too – friends of ours introduced us to the game, and we have had a lot of fun with it!
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We played smuts, which means grease. The goal was to get rid of all your cards. Everyone else had to add up the value of the cards left in their hand. That totaled the pounds of lard we had. Of course the series loser was the one with the most pounds.