Curingas

Curingas is the plural of curinga, the Portuguese term for the joker card in a standard playing-card deck. The curinga is a special card that does not have a fixed suit and is commonly used as a wild card or as a substitute for other cards, depending on the rules of the game. The exact role of jokers varies by game and region; many contemporary decks include one or two jokers that players may designate as wild cards or as a specific high card.

In Canasta and related canasta-family games, Jokers are powerful wild cards and typically count as the highest wild cards, enabling players to complete melds. In various Rummy variants, curingas act as wilds that can replace any missing card. In poker variants that use Jokers, they are sometimes added as wild cards to create more diverse hands. Some games or regions ban jokers or use them with fixed roles.

The term curingas is widely used in Brazilian Portuguese and Portuguese-speaking communities. Beyond cards, curinga can also refer to a person who can assume different roles or functions as a flexible, adaptable participant, a figurative "wild card" in social or organizational contexts.

Curingas and related concepts are part of a broader category of wild cards in card games, with similar concepts found in other languages, where one or more cards can represent multiple values or suits.

See also: Joker (card); Wildcard; Canasta; Rummy.