Ten contracts, each one harder than the last, on a deck numbered 1 to 12 in four colours. Runs ignore colour entirely — that is the whole trick.
⚙️ Settings
Round ends
Cards that play
Wild card lay-offs
Stuck on a contract
Skip cards ⊘
A skip hits
If you do not go down
🎯 The idea
Ten contracts. Each one names what you must lay down before you can start
getting rid of cards. Finish all ten first and you win. Miss a contract
and you play it again while everyone else moves on — though after
three misses the game moves you along anyway.
📋 The ten contracts
A set is cards with the same number. A run
is numbers in order, any colours. A colour group is cards
that share a colour, any numbers.
🌈 Runs ignore colour — and that is the difference
This catches people who have played our Aggravation, where a run
must be all one suit. Here a run is just numbers in order:
4● 5■ 6▲ 7◆ is a perfectly good run of four.
Colour matters in exactly one place: the 7 of one colour
contract. Nowhere else.
🃏 The deck
Two packs numbered 1 to 12 in four colours, plus eight
wilds — 104 cards. There are no aces, no face cards and no
jacks; 1 is simply the lowest number and 12 the highest. A run does
not wrap around from 12 back to 1.
Each colour has its own shape too — red ●, blue ■, green ▲,
yellow ◆ — so you never have to tell them apart by colour alone.
📖 What the words mean
Contract
What this round requires you to lay down. It is your contract until you make it.
Meld
One group of cards — a single set, run or colour group.
Set
Three or more cards with the same number. Colour irrelevant.
Run
Three or more numbers in order. Colour irrelevant. No wrapping from 12 to 1.
Colour group
Three or more cards sharing a colour. Numbers irrelevant.
Wild
A ★ card, standing in for anything. A meld may never hold more wilds than real cards.
Going down
Laying your contract face up. You lay exactly the contract — no extras.
Laying off
Once you are down, adding spare cards to anybody’s melds. This is how you empty your hand.
Buried
A discard somebody covered up. Buried cards can never be taken again.
🃏 Your turn
1. Draw — the face-down pile, or the discard if it is not buried. 2. Go down if your hand makes this contract. 3. Lay off spare cards onto any melds on the table, once you are down. 4. Discard one card. Always — even the turn you go out.
There is no stealing in this game and no swap round. The discard
pile is yours only on your own turn.
📥 Going down — you pick the cards
Tap 📥 Go down… and empty frames appear above your hand, one for
each meld this contract needs. Tap a card to put it in; tap it again to
take it back. A frame goes green ✓ when it holds a real meld, and
✅ Lay it down starts flashing when all of them do.
This matters more than it sounds. Going down commits six to nine cards at
once, and every card left in your hand counts against you at the end of
the contract — so which cards you lay, and whether you spend a wild or
keep it back for a lay-off, is your decision to make.
In a hurry? ✨ Fill for me fills the frames in for you. It only
fills them — nothing is laid down until you say so, and you can move any
card first.
⇅ Sorting your hand
The button next to the contract number switches your hand between
by number and by colour. It is worth changing between
contracts: 2 sets of 3 is easiest to see sorted by number, and
7 of one colour is easiest to see sorted by colour.
Remember that runs here ignore colour — a run of 4 can be red,
blue, green and yellow — so sorting by number is usually the one that
shows you a run.
Sorting only changes how the cards are arranged on screen. It never
changes your hand, and it will not disturb cards you have already put in
a frame. Wilds always sit at the left-hand end.
🏆 Scoring
When a round ends, count what is left in your hand: numbers 1–9
score 5, numbers 10–12 score 10, wilds score
25.
Points add up across all ten contracts and low is good. First to
finish contract 10 wins; if two finish together, the lower total takes it.
🙂 Levels
🌱 Sprout: one opponent who plays straight down the line. 🧭 Scout: two opponents who take useful discards and lay off. 🏆 Ace: three opponents who hoard wilds and work every contract.
A level changes how well they play, never what they can see.
🍀 Stuck on a contract
Off by default. Turn it on in ⚙️ Settings and anyone who has missed
the same contract twice or more is dealt a fairer chance at it next
round — you or an opponent, whoever is behind.
It swaps at most three cards out of that player's hand at the deal, before
anybody has seen anything, and the cards it takes out go straight back
into the pile. Nothing changes during the round, and you still have to
make the contract — it removes the bad luck, not the challenge.
When it is on, the contract line at the top of the table carries a
🍀. Measured over 1,600 seats: the longest anybody stayed stuck fell
from 10 rounds to 7, and being stuck four rounds or more became
56% rarer.
📚 Where these rules come from
Ladder Rummy is our own arrangement of Contract Rummy — the same
public-domain 1930s family as our Aggravation — dealt on a purpose-built
numbered deck. There is no outside rule book to appeal to.
Choices we made, and measured:
• The longest run is 8, not 9. We simulated it: with 12 numbers
and a 10-card hand, a run of nine leaves almost no slack, and one game in
120 ran 807 rounds with a player still stuck on it.
• Three misses and you move on. Pure repeat-until-you-make-it does
not reliably finish. Our Aggravation keeps the pure rule because it has
bigger hands; this one does not.
• No stealing and no swap round, both of which Aggravation has.
📜 The rules
🖨️ A card for the table
Print the rules on one sheet, fold it into a card and keep it in
the deck box. One side, no scissors.
Open the printable rules card