[1][2] In America it is usually recorded in the literature as Ranter Go Round (rarely is it hyphenated), but is also sometimes called Screw Your Neighbor which, however, is an alternative name used for at least four other quite different card games.

Ranter Go Round is related to the dedicated pack card or tile games of Gnav and Killekort.

[4] According to Professor Hoffmann (1891), the original method of scoring was to use a board like that in the games of merelles or nine men's morris, each player receiving one counter.

[5] In Cornwall, the three lowest cards had nicknames; the ace was "wee", the two was a "pig's toe" and the three a "tailor's yard."

[5] Confusingly, at about the same time, the name Ranter Go Round appears in the literature associated with the different game of Snip, Snap, Snorem.

For example, in 1879 in a publication by the English Dialect Society it is described as "an old-fashioned game of cards, marked with chalk upon a bellows or tea-tray.

[8][b] Each player is dealt one card, face down, after which play begins with eldest hand, to the left of the dealer.

Holding a king, eldest faces it on the table otherwise decides whether to keep it, by saying "stand", or exchange it with the player on the left.

[8] John McLeod is the only source to consider the case where the last two players both lose their final counters in a tie and gives several options which must be pre-agreed:[12] Typical variations include: McLeod records further variations in an American version of Screw Your Neighbor in which up to 26 players start with four lives in the guise of 4 stakes.