Five Seven Five: A Cooperative Game of Meditative Creation

In Five Seven Five you work together or alone to create a traditional water garden by building haiku from five and seven syllable phrases. Every deck contains the translated lines of different haiku by the 17th century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, who is often credited as being responsible for popularizing haiku. These different lines can be combined to form many haiku with which to build your garden.

The dealer goes first, turning over the top garden card and playing two cards from their hand against the seven syllable line on the garden card to build a haiku, reading each to the group as it’s played. Each player, in clockwise order, plays two cards from their hands to create their own haiku, each reading their creation in turn. 

Once every player has created a haiku, the dealer selects their favorite haiku from the group. The player who played those cards, then places the garden card face up in the play area in a location of their choosing. All koi cards which were played in that round are placed in the discard pile and each player draws two new cards to bring their hand back up to a maximum of six cards. The dealer role passes to the next player in clockwise order and play continues until all garden cards have been placed into the play area, creating a unique garden. If you run out of koi cards in the pond, shuffle the discard pile and stock the pond with cards.

This is the print and play version of Five Seven Five. If you'd like to order a fully printed editionit is available for purchase here.