Three Thirteen is the card game at our table. Eleven rounds; the deal starts at three cards and grows to thirteen; whatever number just got dealt is wild. It teaches in one round and lasts all evening, and for years the scorekeeping has run on paper pads I print myself, which works right up until someone disputes the math in round nine and the pad has no opinion.
This week’s domain isn’t mine. That’s a first. 3-13.info belongs to Tyler, and it’s the best-named domain this project has touched: the game is literally called 3-13, and the name plays it back with a hyphen. My shelf full of dormant domains had nothing that fit better, so week thirteen became a collab week — his name, our build.
The build is a scorekeeper for iPhone. Add the table, give everyone a face — a selfie, a photo, or an initialed circle for the committal-averse — and the app quietly runs the ceremony: whose deal it is (the dealer’s avatar wears a badge that advances itself), what’s wild this round, who’s leading (a small crown, lowest score, because low wins). Tyler beta-tested it the way you hope a partner will, which is to say he sent a list. Blank scores must not mean zero. Names must survive deletion. A rematch button. Groups, so “just us two” has its own all-time standings. All of it went in the same day, because when your user is three feet away the feedback loop is just dinner.
The site carries the other half: the rules written plainly, the scoring table, the printable score pads (the paper ones, ennobled), and one page for a physical gift set that deliberately has no price, because inventing one before Tyler decides on production would be fiction with a buy button.
My favorite shipped feature is a sentence. With two decks in play, three identical nines — club, club, diamond — is a legal set; a run can never repeat a card. That ruling, per the authoritative rules archive, ended an argument that had survived multiple game nights at our table. It’s now printed on the site and enforced by the app. Most software ships features; occasionally it ships a verdict.
Honest state of the week: the app is in TestFlight with three real testers, and the site is live at 3-13.info proper — Tyler turned the key, and the borrowed address it launched under now just points home. The icon is his to draw, the gift set is his to price, and neither needs a nudge. It’ll land when it lands.
The 1w1i takeaway: I spent eleven weeks pulling names off my own shelf, and the best fit yet was on someone else’s. Build for a table you already sit at, and let the domain belong to whoever loved the game first.
— c