Egyptian Rat Screw
Overview
Egyptian Rat Screw (also called Egyptian War) is a fast slap card game for 2–4 players. Flip cards onto a shared pile, race to slap doubles and sandwiches, and survive face-card challenges to collect the spoils. Last player holding cards wins.
For the simpler slap-on-Jack game, play
Slapjack.
Setup
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Deck: A standard 52-card deck (no jokers)
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Dealing: Shuffle and deal the entire deck face-down as evenly as possible. Each player keeps a personal face-down deck.
How to Play
Players take turns flipping the top card of their deck face-up onto the shared center pile. The first flip rotates between games: Player 1 flips first in the first game, Player 2 in the next, and so on around the table.
Face-card challenges
When a face card is flipped, a challenge begins:
Chances the next player(s) get
The next player must flip cards hoping to play another face card within those chances. That one player flips every chance — play does not pass around the table during a challenge:
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If they play a face card in time, they become the new challenger and the next seat must answer that face card with a fresh set of chances.
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If they burn through all chances without a face card, the challenger wins the entire center pile (added face-down under their deck) and plays next.
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If they run out of cards before using all their chances, the challenge is lost and the challenger takes the pile.
Slap opportunities
Whenever the top of the pile shows a slap pattern, play pauses for a slap race — any player with cards may slap:
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Double: the top two cards share a rank
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Sandwich: the top card matches the card two beneath it (one card in between)
Correct slap: that player takes the whole pile under their deck and plays next. Any pending challenge is cancelled.
Wrong slap: that player burns the top card of their deck under the pile and is briefly locked out so others can still slap.
Elimination
A player with no cards left is out (except a face-card challenger waiting to claim the pile). They cannot slap or flip. When only one player still holds cards and no slap/challenge is pending, that player wins — leftover pile cards go to them.
Digital notes
This digital version uses realtime actions so slap races work across seats. Flipping is still seat-ordered via the current “next to play” marker. Wrong slaps freeze you for 1.5 seconds.