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Disclaimer: I'm a true beginner with the Russian language.

I struggle translating a riddle:

I'm between the King and the Queen - where am I?

The ‘King’ and the ‘Queen’ being playing card, it seems that ‘Queen’ would be translated дама in this context, but should ‘King’ stay король ?

Also, what's most correct:

Я между королем и дамой - Где я ?

vs

Я между король и дама - Где я ?

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In playing cards, ‘Queen’ is дама and ‘King’ is король. The first variant of the translation is absolutely correct,

Я между королем и дамой - Где я ?

Also, королем can be spelled as королём which is even more correct. Whenever a Russian word has the letter ё, one is free to spell it as e, still the pronunciation remains that of ё, that is, [jo] or [o] with the previous consonant palatalized, the latter being the case with королём/королем [kərɐˈlʲom].

In the second variant of translation the cases are wrong, both nouns after между must be in the Instrumental case, not in the Nominative.

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  • @Heagon - Really? Who on earth uses Genitive after между? Who will say *между дома и сарая or *между меня и тебя? If such usage really still exists somewhere, it is definitely not recommended for beginner level learners, it is not worth noting.
    – Yellow Sky
    Dec 18, 2020 at 9:58
  • @Heagon There is one more clarification. The nouns after между can be in genitive case only for между nessery X or между nessery X and nessery Y. It can't be in genitive case for между one X and one Y. Между двух столбов. Между двумя столбами. Между столбом и стеной. But we can't say: "Между столба и стены. Между дамы и короля"
    – Elena
    Dec 18, 2020 at 10:23
  • @Heagon - I've edited the question to exclude mentioning the Genitive case which is marked as “obsolete” already in the 1930s Ushakov's dictionary.
    – Yellow Sky
    Dec 18, 2020 at 10:36

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