Top 10 facts about shuffling

JEREMY Corbyn has spent the last few days shuffling his shadow cabinet, so here are a few facts about shuffling.

 

There are various different kind of card shuffles

 

1. Though frequently called a “reshuffle”, this is technically a shuffle as it is the first time Corbyn has shuffled his cabinet since its formation. 

2. Although the verb “to shuffle” first appeared in English in 1532, “reshuffle” arrived only in 1802. 

3. In Harold Macmillan’s notorious “Night of the long knives” reshuffle of 1962, seven members of the cabinet were sacked. 

4. The game of shuffleboard, in which a coin is propelled across a polished surface, was first, in the 1530s, called “shove-board” or “shovel-board”. 

5. The earliest use of “shuffle” for a redistribution of government posts was in Australia in 1897.

 

Jonathan Reynolds,left, and Kevan Jones have both left the shadow cabinet

 

6. Apart from the usual riffle or overhand shuffles for playing cards, there are also shuffles called Pile, Hindu, Corgi, Mondean, Weave and Mexican Spiral. 

7. A riffle shuffle, interleaving two halves of the pack, is an out-shuffle or in-shuffle, according to whether the top card stays on top or not. 

8. 52 perfect in-shuffles restore the original order of the cards … 

9. … but you only need eight perfect out-shuffles to bring back the original order. 

10. Shuffle-wing is an old name for hedge sparrows.