Tussie Mussie

2–4 PLAYERS | AGES 8+ | 30 MINUTES

Tussie mussies exemplified the Victorian custom of assigning meaning to the flowers that friends and lovers exchanged. Inspired by the ideals of elegance and discretion, these bouquets were carefully made to convey subtle messages to their recipients. Now you can choose the right flowers to make a winning tussie mussie of your own!

Components

• 18 Flower Cards

Setup

1. Shuffle all 18 cards and place them facedown in a deck. Allow room for a discard pile.
2. The player that most recently smelled a flower is the first player.

The game consists of three rounds. Each round, players will take turns offering cards to their neighbor (as described below), followed by Before Scoring actions and Scoring.

Key Terminology

• Offer: A set of two cards, one faceup and one facedown, offered to a recipient. The recipient may not look at the facedown card before choosing a card.
• Arrangement: The set of cards a player has collected, kept on the table in front of them. Cards are added to Arrangements from left to right and cannot be rearranged, as some cards score based on adjacency. Cards must remain faceup or facedown unless affected by another card.
• Keepsakes: The facedown cards in a player’s Arrangement. A player may look at their Keepsakes at any time, then return them facedown to the table in their original positions. Players may not look at other players’ Keepsakes.
• Bouquet: The faceup cards in a player’s Arrangement.

Turn Structure

Each turn, the active player, or offerer, makes an Offer of flowers to the recipient.

1. The offerer draws two cards and looks at them. They place one faceup and one facedown on the table as an Offer to the recipient.

For flavor, you can state the faceup flower’s meaning. Example: “You have deceived me”

2. The recipient chooses one card from the Offer and adds it as the rightmost card in their Arrangement, keeping its faceup or facedown orientation.
3. The offerer takes the other card and adds it as the rightmost card in their Arrangement, keeping its faceup or facedown orientation.

Offer Order

• 2 Players: Players alternate offering cards until both have four cards.
• 3–4 Players: The first player offers cards to the player on their left. That player then offers cards to the player on their left and Offers continue clockwise around the table until all players have two cards. Afterwards, the first player offers cards to the player on their right, and Offers continue counterclockwise around the table until all players have four cards.

Before Scoring

At the end of the round, each Arrangement will have four cards.

Each player moves their facedown Keepsakes closer to them, creating a second row of cards in their original columns.

Then, each player reveals their Keepsakes by flipping them faceup, keeping them in their original columns.

Note: Each card is adjacent to the cards on its left and right, whether they are in your Bouquet or Keepsakes, but some scoring conditions may specify that adjacent cards must be in your Bouquet or Keepsakes.

Players now simultaneously take actions specified on their cards that say, “Before scoring.” Actions may be taken in any order the player chooses.

Scoring

Each player will score their Arrangement, scoring each card from left to right as follows:

• Each heart icon is worth 1 Point.
• Cards may have additional scoring conditions.

Record the scores for each player.

If three rounds have been completed, the game is over. Otherwise, shuffle all 18 cards together and start a new round. For the new round, the first player rotates clockwise to the next player.

Winning the Game

The player with the highest total score after three rounds wins the game.

In a tie, tied players compare their flowers from the final round. The player with the first flower name alphabetically wins.

• Forget-Me-Not: When scoring, adjacent cards may be in your Bouquet or Keepsakes.
• Honeysuckle: When scoring, adjacent cards must be in your Bouquet, but Honeysuckle may be in your Bouquet or Keepsakes.
• Marigold: When you remove a card from your Arrangement, it will have three cards. If the removed card was adjacent to two cards, those two cards are now adjacent to each other.
• Pink Larkspur: If you replace a card in your Arrangement, place the remaining cards from your hand into the discard pile. The Pink Larkspur’s ability may replace itself with another card.

Design: Elizabeth Hargrave
Art: Beth Sobel
Rules Editing: Michael Lee

FAQ and more games at buttonshygames.com