How to play cards with your grandma when you live in another city

The question I get most is some version of this: “Is there a card game I can play with my grandmother, when she is there and I am here?” Online play is the obvious answer and the wrong one. It needs an account, a friend request, a lobby, two people free at the same minute, and an internet connection that holds. She has none of those, and she should not need them.

Caravita does it the other way round. Every morning a new Daily Challenge is dealt from the date: three games, the same cards for everyone in the world that day. She opens hers at her table; you open yours on the train. One win finishes the day, and a loss deals the same cards again until midnight, so there is always another go.

Then you call her. “Did you get the Pyramid this morning?” “I did not, the 7 was buried.” “It was, I had to go round it.” That is the game you play together: not on a server, on the phone, the way she already talks to you.

Her Journal keeps the calendar. Every morning she played has a ring, and every Daily she won is gold. A day she skipped is simply blank, never red. Nothing in the game punishes her for not showing up, and nothing counts a streak she might break.

There is no account, so there is nothing to set up on her side. If she has the game, she has the Daily. The first page shows a morning of it, hers and yours.