Game On! - Part 2

Have you been playing this weekend? As I mentioned in last week's post, I've been playing with games and my camera. Here's a look at the next set of games I found in my game cabinet.

Do you know how hard it was to put all those Scrabble tiles in order for the top left photo? I got them all set, took the picture, and I had one out of order. Set them up again, took the picture, and one of the "H's" was upside down? Let me tell you, playing with games can be very challenging! If you find a mistake now, please don't tell me!!

Okay, back to the topic of this post. It seems a game cabinet would not be complete without a Scrabble game. My mom liked to play Scrabble. She was good at adding those long, unusual words; words I’d never even heard of! We trusted her when she said it really was a word, because when challenged, she was always right!

TRIVIA: Scrabble was created by an American architect Alfred Mosher Butts in 1938. It is a variation of an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko. The history of Scrabble is quite interesting. If you’d like to learn more about this popular game you can go here. There's a legend that "Butts studied the front page of 'The New York Times' to make his calculations for the letter distribution in the game." When he first began selling the games, the letters were hand-stamped on the tiles. His game didn't do very well until in the 1950's when Macy's began to sell it. Then it became so popular that the game had to be "rationed to stores around the country."

One of my all-time favorite games as a child was Jacks. I remember we carried our Jacks to school in a small pouch and played on the sidewalk at recess. I also remember the scrapped knuckles one could get trying to pick up the Jacks quickly!

TRIVIA: Jacks is a game of ancient origin. It was originally called Knucklebones and was played with real bones, usually from sheep. The most popular game of Jacks is Onesies, but there's also Around The World, Over The Fence, In the Basket, and Pigs In A Pen. Do you remember those? I still sit on the floor and play Jacks every now and then. I'm still pretty good at it, but it is certainly much harder to get up off the floor!

I also found four boxes of Dominoes in the game cabinet; an old black set from early married life, a white set with the Union Pacific train symbol on the back that was bought when our train-loving-son was home, a Dora set bought when our first grandson learned to play Dominoes and loved to watch Dora, and a Lightning McQueen set bought a few years later for the grandsons. I would really like to know how many different Domino sets there are!

TRIVIA: Dominoes are believed to have originated in China in the 12th century. Of course Dominoes have been used in many challenges. Here's a few records I found, but they could have changed by now.

most dominoes toppled by a group

4,491,864 in 2009

most dominoes toppled by an individual

321,197 in 2011

most dominoes toppled underwater

11,466 in 2015

And lastly I uncovered several card games. There was Rook, Old Maid, Go Fish, several kinds of Uno, and a regular deck of cards.

TRIVIA: Scholars agree that playing cards appeared in Imperial China as early as the 9^th century. By the 11^th century, playing cards, were spreading throughout the Asian continent and later into Egypt. Playing cards first entered Southern Europe in the 14^th century.

You might be surprised to know that the United States introduced the Joker into the deck. The Joker was invented about 1860 as a third trump card. The earliest reference to a Joker functioning as a wild card dates to 1875 in a variation of poker.

Well there you have it, probably more than you ever wanted to know about games!! I love finding out about things, little bits of trivia that I didn't know. Oh, that reminds me of Trivial Pursuit a more modern game invented in 1979. I don't have a Trivial Pursuit game, because I don't like it. I've never been able to retain all those little bits of information that I've read!

I hope you've enjoyed my photography theme of games and remember to keep on playing and laughing.

"Play keeps us vital and alive.

It gives us an enthusiasm for life

that is irreplaceable.

Without it, life just doesn't taste good."

~ Lucia Capocchione

Game On!

Remember, once upon a time, when we all knew how to play? I’m not talking about children playing, that’s a whole other post! I’m talking about us. The adults in the room. How long has it been since you laughed and played? It hasn’t been too long for me. My grandchildren were here recently and we played games. I love to play Apples to Apples with them. It’s a fun game with not a lot of competition and a lot of laughter.

I’ve always enjoyed playing games. I remember the time when my sister and I kept a game of Monopoly going all summer. We changed the rules a little and borrowed money every time we went broke. This past week, when it was so hot outside, I decided to drag out my games. There was a problem though. I had no one to play the games with.  Mr. H only likes to play Checkers and he beats me every time, so that’s no fun for me!  I’m not a sore loser, I just would like to win every now and then! I spent seven days playing with games. Notice I said WITH games. I’ve been photographing them. To me, that’s play!  Now, a little about that game Mr. H beats me at, Checkers. The board game called “Checkers” in North America and “Draughts” in Europe is one of the oldest games known to man. Evidence of Checker games have been found in Egyptian burial chambers.

The curious side of me wanted to know more about the games I played with, so off to Google I went. I found plenty of information. For instance, did you know that there are at least twelve games that are still popular today, but that were invented over 50 years ago? Here’s the list: Risk, Candyland, Clue, Chutes & Ladders, Scrabble, Sorry, Stratego, Monopoly, Chinese Checkers, Life, Chess, and Checkers. I have nine of these in my game cabinet. I don’t have Risk, Stratego, or a Chess game, but I have played them. They require a little too much thinking for them to be fun to me!

My Chinese Checker game is from my childhood. Chinese Checkers was invented in Germany in 1892. The name Chinese Checkers originated in the United States as a marketing scheme by Bill and Jack Pressman in 1928. It has always been my favorite game. Not only do I love marbles, but I love the sound of them hitting the metal as you jump across the board.

Digging around in my sash of games I found our Clue game. Clue was invented by Anthony E. Pratt in 1944. Pratt came up with the idea during the Second World War. He once said “Between the wars all the bright young things would congregate in each other’s homes for parties at weekends. We’d play a stupid game called Murder, where guests crept up on each other in corridors and the victim would shriek and fall on the floor.” He missed playing parlor games and attending parties during the blackouts and decided to create a board game of his favorite parlor game, Murder.

I’m embarrassed to say that I never wondered who was murdered. I guess I never read the directions, my mom probably taught us how to play. I went to the directions and there was my answer. “Mr.  Boddy – apparently the victim of foul play – is found in one of the rooms of his mansion.” Did you know it was a Mr. Boddy that was murdered? Millions of times the mystery of who, what, and where has been solved, but nobody knows why the unfortunate Mr. Boddy was killed in his mansion.

I think I’ll stop this post now. I’ve shown you three of the seven games I played with.  I’ll be back next week with the rest of them. If I put them all in this post, it would be way too long. In the meantime, take a little time to play and laugh!

"A good laugh is sunshine in a house."

~ Thackeray

Friday Finds

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I guess the image above makes it pretty obvious what I found!!  Jacks...metal jacks...not exactly what I had as a child, they were a little thinner than these, but these will do. I can now play jacks again. Thanks to Wanda for suggesting that I look on Amazon for them. I should have known, you can just about buy anything from Amazon. Just so you know, in case you're dying to buy a set, the pouch in the background didn't come with the jacks, it was my grandfather's and has some fool's gold from Colorado in it.

Jacks is an ancient game, but kids all over the world still play it in one form or the other. I've read that you can play a different version of jacks with rocks. I think I'd better stick to throwing up a ball, not tossing up rocks! We played jacks every day, either at school or home. We played...

• Black Widow (ones to tens without missing)
• Cherries in a Basket (place jacks in cupped hand)
• Pigs in a Pen (slide jacks into other hand that is slightly cupped on the ground)
• Over the Fence (place jacks on the other side of straight hand)
• Around the World (make a circle in the air around the ball before it bounces)

Do you remember Kissies?  I'd almost forgotten about Kissies, when the jacks are thrown out and two (or more) jacks are touching or stacked. You can choose to either pick them up as part of a play or drop them again to spread them out. We always kissed the two that were touching before dropping them again.

Now I have something else to waste my time on, but I tell myself I'm keeping my hands and fingers limber!  I don't think I'm too bad either. I made it all the way to the sevens the first game and my hands don't move near as fast as they used too. I also don't sit on the floor very well any more.

Wanna Play?

"Men do not quit playing because they grow old;

they grow old because they quit playing."

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes