October 25, 1952: Taking notes at Bridge

To get this joke, you must know that remembering what cards have already been played is an essential skill for playing Bridge well. Any serious Bridge player would know taking notes like this is not allowed.

If you know nothing about the game, you would not believe the levels of anal-retentiveness involved in high-level Bridge. There are elaborate systems of bidding designed to communicate to your partner information about your hand, but there are also rules regarding this, that if you use such a system the other team must be aware of it. I don't really understand it entirely myself.

October 22, 1952: Thanks for clarifying, girls

Instances like this can't be good for a kid's self-esteem. It is difficult to imagine, by the way, these little kids playing bridge. Charlie Brown's supposed to be about four or five right now, although it's possible that it's not Contract Bridge.

I'd like to point out that Charlie Brown breaks the fourth wall in the last panel.

October 20, 1952: Bridge column

I remember looking with just as much bewilderment at the bridge column in our local paper as a kid.

Glancing at the last panel by itself, it looks very close to the classic Peanuts look. Patty is almost completely in that style, Charlie Brown's head is just a little too oval and his eye a little too thick.

September 12, 1952: Seven Spades

If you have a strong hand of one suit in Contract Bridge, you can bid strongly in it and try to make it trump. If you have seven cards of a suit, then the most any other player can have is six, guaranteeing you one trick and probably worth several more. And Spades is the strongest bidding suit, beaten only by No Trump.

Snoopy's reaction here is great.

August 29, 1952: Charlie Brown plays it safe

This time the game is more obviously Bridge (although it could be another bidding game like Spades, I suppose). A nice, subtle touch here is the smile on Patty's face.

For those who are not familiar with the game... In Bridge, a good hand is generally one in which you have one suit with a lot of cards. If you're the highest bidder then you determine which suit is trump, so if you have a strong suit it's mostly to your advantage to bid high. But there are many other factors at work as well. For a game that so limits the types of actions available to players, Contract Bridge is remarkably subtle and deep.

To add to the list of things Snoopy can say: *gasp*.

August 27, 1952: Bridge building

The card game Charlie Brown and Patty are playing here is probably Bridge, a game we hear Schulz was devoted to around this time.

As time passes, there are two types of character roles generally in Peanuts: those who we are expected to empathize with and those we view from without. Charlie Brown is nearly always someone with which we are to identify with, but with other characters it varies. After she settles into her role of Resident Crab Lucy, a force-of-nature type, is viewed from outside. Linus can play both roles, the former when interacting with his sister, the latter when playing the part of inscrutable wise kid. It's the difference between having a three-dimensional character and a two-dimensional one: both are actually necessary, but it can be troublesome to have all one or the other. (With three dimensional characters, it is easy to have them come out bland and wishy-washy. They tend to need elemental, two-dimensional characters to bounce off of and define them.)

Patty and Violet seem to be used more as persecutors for Charlie Brown later on, but here she and CB are used identical roles.