Dummett's own 1999 primary statement on unsolved Mamluk/Chinese playing-card problems does not raise the coins-to-polo-sticks misreading mechanism

history-of-gamesplaying-cardsetymologysourcing-verificationargument-from-silence

The International Playing-Card Society preserves a primary document: Michael Dummett's own submission of open questions in playing-card research, dated 1999-02-10. Its section on "Problems about Playing-Cards Outside Europe" addresses the Chinese-Mamluk card connection directly — asking whether the Chinese money pack's origins can be dated more precisely, and whether the Topkapi Mamluk deck's cups suit name ţūmān can be explained — but does not list the coins-suit-misread-as-polo-sticks mechanism among the open problems. That silence is notable because the ţūmān question, structurally similar (an unexplained suit-name puzzle in the same deck), did get flagged by Dummett and went on to generate two dedicated journal articles (O'Donovan 2001; Pollett 2002).

Silence is not disconfirmation — Dummett may simply have considered the polo-sticks/batons naming settled rather than open. But it means the strongest-tier primary material reached this session, in Dummett's own words, neither confirms nor engages claim-mamluk-card-suit-renamed-twice-coins-polo-sticks-batons's mechanism. Mayer's 1971 monograph and Dummett & Abu-Deeb's 1973 Warburg article — the two sources actually most likely to state or omit the mechanism explicitly — remain unread.