Fewer or less...

Well Bags you have sent me scurrying to Oxford dictionary
www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/less-or-fewer
In brief, it appears that fewer is correct when referring to plural objects that can be counted, and less when referring to a singular mass.
So are we referring to Mr Crabb, a singular mass, or a plural pack of cards in your sentence?
I think the latter, clumsy though it seems.

That's what I thought, jane. But in this instance 'less' just doesn't seem wrong. Maybe I've been corrupted by too many lesses...

Thanks for this. I'm always confused about the rules regarding 'fewer' and 'less' !

We tend to say 'that's one less thing to worry about' when we mean there are several, though. 'That's one fewer thing to worry about' just sounds...wrong!

I always stumble at a wrongly used 'less'. It seems to be widely assumed that 'less' and 'fewer' are interchangeable which, of course, they're not. In that sentence 'fewer' should be used, but it sounds very wrong to my ears.

'Fewer horses mean less sh**e' as a rather uncouth teacher of English used to take delight in telling his class.

I agree that less sounds better in that context bags

I think that before long the word 'fewer' will have disappeared. People don't seem to know when to use it, so they don't. Shame really, but language evolves (shrug).

I think it's more complex than the simple rule that countable nouns take 'fewer' and uncountable take 'less'. It seems to me that when we are talking about 'one' then we more comfortably use 'less': for example: 'that's one less to worry about'; 'one less cup to break' etc. This must be true, because everyone so far has said that this sounds better to them than using 'fewer'. We also say 'there's one less reason' not 'there's one fewer reason'.