Category Archives: Game

Chopsticks: The Game

Nationality: United States of America
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 04/25/2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

How do you play?

“Ok, so each player put out their pointer finger on each hand, ok, wait I know this. So… hmmm wait… the goal of the game is to get your partner to have five fingers out on both hands. And then they lose. And the way you play is you stick out your pointer finger on each hand, and you tap one of your partner’s hands, and they have to add a-as many fingers as you currently have out to that hand.”

Do you have any special rules?

“Yes, so let’s say you have three fingers out on one hand and one on the other, and then you want to switch, you can hit your hands and make them two and two. You can transfer as many fingers as you want to your other hand. And even if your hand is out, you can, like, still redistribute fingers to it and bring it back in.”

Context:

The informant is my twin sister. She is Jewish and attended public school her entire life. This information was collected during a family zoom call where we were checking in with each other.

Analysis:

My informant’s account of Chopsticks’ rules was quite difficult to understand, which emphasizes that this game is best taught visually and learned through practice. Chopsticks is an engaging and competitive game that lets children exercise their mental math and strategy skills. It’s complicated enough to warrant fierce competition, but simple enough to master after only playing a few rounds. I even established social groups in elementary school through playing chopsticks and similar games.

Euchre – Midwestern Card Game

Nationality: American (Arizona)
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/9/2021
Primary Language: English

Informant’s Background:

My informant, JA, is a undergraduate student at the University of Southern California. He moved from his family home in Arizona to attend college in Los Angeles. His family is of German ancestry.

Context:

I (AT) am a close friend of JA, and he comes over to hang out at my apartment often. I asked him if he had any folklore he could share and telling me about this game that I had never heard of was his response.

Performance:

JA: “So anyways Euchre is a card game that I think is relatively popular throughout the Midwest, but it’s a card game that is typically is played with four players, but it can be scaled up and down, where players take tricks based on suits and everyone is divided into two teams and every hand in the basic four-player variant you play with your partner across from you, and a trump suit is decided by dealing out 5 cards to each player. It’s only the cards nine, ten, jack, queen, king, and ace are the only cards in each suit in the game, uh, five cards are dealt to each player and four are set aside, and the top is turned over which determines the trump suit. Then its played like a typical trick taking game where high cards take tricks, unless the trump suit is played in which case those cards take the trick, but in Euchre, uhm, the highest card of the trump suits are the jacks instead of the aces, so if heart is trump then jack of hearts is the highest, while the other colors spade and clubs in that hand would have the normal order. And you play enough rounds until one team gets ten points. I dunno, it’s just a very easy game to teach people, you can get into it very quickly, and I play it a lot with my parents and my grandparents, especially when they’re around, because it’s just… the primary activity that we do together, it’s kind of a tradition we do it a lot after meals, family meals, with big gatherings like that. It’s… I dunno I guess the primary tradition we have on that side of the family – it’s very casual, it’s a good time.”

AT: “Who taught you the game?”

JA: “I think my mom had to have taught me the game first, uhm, but she might have taught it in conjunction with my grandparents, I’m not sure.”

AT: “But they all already knew it? Do you know where they learned it from?”

JA: “I mean my mom learned it from my grandparents, beyond that, I don’t know.”

Thoughts:

I don’t have much to add to this one, other than that I think it’s interesting that a specific card game can become such a tradition in someone’s family, with the rules being passed on through generations. I had also never heard of the game itself, so I thought it was worth documenting here. 

Pooh’s Sticks

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Richardson, TX
Performance Date: April 30, 2021
Primary Language: English

Main piece: Pooh’s Sticks is something we always do, and my dad did it as a kid too, where you find a pond with a bridge over it, or a river – something that has moving water. Everybody finds a stick that they think is going to be the winning stick, you drop it off one side, run to the other, and whoever’s stick comes out first is the winner. 

I don’t know why we call it that. I think it comes from Winnie the Pooh, they do that.

Background: O is twenty years old, but has been playing Pooh’s Sticks since early childhood. While she grew up in Richardson, Texas, she was taught this game by her father, who grew up in Malmesbury, a town in Wiltshire, England. She and her brother, who is sixteen, continue to play Pooh’s Sticks with her parents. The game is not specific to a particular location; she says that they’ll play the game whenever “we come across a good bridge and river”. 

Context: I initially approached O to discuss folklore in the visual arts, as she is an illustrator. While we were discussing it, she asked if she could tell me about folklore from her childhood. I enthusiastically said yes, and she told me about Pooh’s Sticks. She finds the game quaint and charming, and got really excited when telling me about the races she’ll have with her parents and brother. It’s a game she still enjoys playing to this day.

Analysis: This folk game appeals as it costs nothing to play, can be played with any indeterminate number of players, and requires no skill set nor set age. Pooh’s Sticks was initially taught to O as a small child by her father, showing that it is a way to keep a kid entertained when there are no toys or other means of entertainment around. It also gives little kids equal opportunity to win the game, which is a rare occurrence for young children, and something O cited as a particularly exciting part of playing – that she could beat her mom or dad at something. M, O’s father, grew up in the rural village of Malmesbury, and O recalls him telling her about many games from his childhood, all stemming from the nature around them – he and his friends would play frisbee with a frozen cow patty, or throw sticky burs at people to tease them. It seems as if Pooh’s Sticks was another game that arose from this setting, although O (living in Texas) has played this game with her parents in multiple locations.  

Deceased Insect – A Fighter Pilot Bar Game

Nationality: American
Age: 54
Occupation: Aerospace Engineer/Retired USAF Fighter Pilot
Residence: Lancaster, CA
Performance Date: May 2, 2021
Primary Language: English

Context:

The informant, GW, is the interviewer’s father. He was a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force during the late 1980s/early 1990s and participated in operation Desert Storm. I have heard him tell many stories from his time in the Air Force throughout my childhood, so I asked him to tell me some of his traditions to collect for my project. This was an informal interview in our household. The interviewer is indicated as SW in the text.

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Main Text:

GW: “The object of every fighter pilot game is to get other people to buy you beverages, mostly of the alcohol variety. Um, there were short games uh like, deceased insect, which uh, that was the code name because if you said the exact words for deceased insect… then everybody within earshot had to lay on the floor on their back as fast as possible, put their feet and hands up in the air to imitate the dead cockroach on the floor, and the last person to make it all the way to the ground was then the actual deceased insect and was responsible for buying everyone in proximity the beverage of their choice.”

SW: “Where does one learn deceased insect, who teaches it to you?”

GW: “Well usually you learn it by being the one guy standing after somebody yells “dead bug!” and then everybody else hits the floor and you’re sitting there standing… you’re standing in the middle of all of it going ‘what just happened?’ and everybody goes “ha ha! You have to buy everybody a round.’ … That’s how that works.

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Analysis:

As GW mentioned, many fighter pilot traditions center around drinking culture and who owes who the next drink. However, the game of deceased insect also serves as an initiation ritual and a prank to pull on new members who are not aware of its existence. By making new members of the group buy everybody a round, they are paying the penalty for being new. At the same time, they are now in on the joke and have a shared knowledge with other members of the group, and can later play the same prank on other new members of the group. In this way, deceased insect actually serves to create social bonds and obligations to other members, which is of utmost importance in a group that will be sent to war together.

Crud – A Fighter Pilot Bar Game

Nationality: American
Age: 54
Occupation: Aerospace Engineer/Retired USAF Fighter Pilot
Residence: Lancaster, CA
Performance Date: May 2, 2021
Primary Language: English

Context:

The informant, GW, is my father. He was a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force during the late 1980s/early 1990s and participated in operation Desert Storm. I have heard him tell many stories from his time in the Air Force throughout my childhood, so I asked him to tell me some of his traditions to collect for my project. This was an informal interview in our household, and followed a description of another game listed in the archives as “Deceased Insect – A Fighter Pilot Bar Game”. The interviewer is indicated as SW in the text.

For another description of Crud (that claims the game as an invention of the Canadian Air Force), see Bjorn Claes’s description on F-16.net at https://www.f-16.net/varia_article4.html .

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Main Text:

GW: “There is a much more involved game, which required skill, called crud… um that’s played nominally on a, well it’s played on a crud table, which looks a lot like a pool table. But you only use two balls in the entire game. Ones a striped ball so that you can tell, that’s the object ball, and then the shooter ball is the cue ball. The object ball is striped so that you can tell when it stops spinning. So you play with two teams… I’ll go through the rules as quickly as I can for you. You play with two teams that are opposing each other, each person on the team shoots, and then, so you have four people on a team. You have team A person 1 shoots, then team B person 1 shoots, then team A person 2, then team B person 2, then team A person 3, etc. right? And you go round and round and round and round. So you start with the uh, object ball on its designated spot on one end of the table and the shooter on the other end. You can only shoot from the short ends of the table, and um, that means that the center line of your person has to be… on the short end of the table when you shoot. You must have at least one foot on the floor, when you shoot. Uh, and you must be on the short end of the table. Um, there are violations… for not doing any of those things. Any violation is assessed by the referee and all violations result in the loss of a life for that person – each person has three lives. When all of your lives are gone, then uh, you’re out of the game. And when all of the lives are gone for all of the players on your team then your team loses and you must buy your opponent opposite you on the other team the beverage of their choice. And the losing team must pay the referee by a beverage of his choice. So, you have to shoot from the short side of the table, must have at least on the, on the um, ground whenever you shoot, and the centerline of your body must be on the short side of the table. Corners can be defined as either 45 degree corners or 90 degree corners, so that gives you another 45 degrees to get around the table to shoot. That’s important because the other team can also distract and block. Now they can’t, if you’re playing gentlemanly rules, they can’t shove you out of the way, but they can, if they have established position, kinda like basketball, if they have established position you can not move them out of the way. So sometimes having to reach around, have one foot on the floor, and still be on the short side of the table, can be fairly difficult. So, the only pockets that count in crud are the corner pockets. The side pockets are filled with toilet paper rolls usually if it’s a um, pool table that’s been pressed into service but if it’s an actual crud table it won’t have side pockets. So you can lose a life if you… if the um, object ball ends up in a pocket, then that’s a loss of life for somebody. Ok? If it’s… uh, a uh, a kill shot – so somebody shot and you kill the ball, then it’s on the previous guy. If it’s lack of hustle on the guy that’s next in turn, then it’s on subsequent. So, the referee will go ‘Life! Subsequent.’ and he’ll point with his elbow, because it’s impolite to actually point. So, he can get fined if he actually points. 

SW: “Kay. There are a lot of rules to this game.”

GW: “We have… just getting started. Uh, you must make contact with the object ball, except for the serve, right? So on the serve you must make contact with the object ball and get it in motion. The next shooter must shoot, hit the object ball with the shooter ball, again, before the ball stops. The ball must travel at least six inches. Which is normally uh, a dollar bill is used as the measure of six inches. So it must travel at least six inches, and if it doesn’t, then either the referee or the members of the opposing team can scream ‘No six!’ and then it must be measured from the spot where it was hit to where it stopped to determine whether it had gone six inches or not. If it has gone six inches then it’s the subsequent player for lack of hustle, if it didn’t go six inches then it’s the shooter for no six. You with me? So, there’s a couple of different ways to play this game, right? Ok there’s also, let’s see, what other violations are there? Um, if you, if the object ball stops, and you have the ball in hand, that’s ball in hand or dead ball, right? Um, and that’s bad on you, right? You can shoot as many times as you want to, uh as long as the balls, as long as the object balls still rolling, right? But as soon as it hits, then you gotta get out of the way and it’s time for the other two to get in, right? So anybody’s whos not actively either the person shooting or the subsequent player, must be at least three feet away from the table, kay?”

SW: “That results in a lot of running.”

GW: “Yeah. Um, and you can do several different things, right? One way to get a kill is to get it into a pocket, right? So, and you, the object ball can go in the pocket any time. So if the object ball goes in the pocket then somebody’s gotta dig it out and get to the shot before it stops, right? Um, you can crawl across the table, to get to where you wanna go, if you think you’re that fast. But if you hit either one of the balls or the referee, then it’s either, so you would be called for interference if you hit the, one of the balls, that would be an automatic life. If you hit the referee, that’s usually called gross buffoonery and uh, and penalized another beverage, or a life. Um, you can argue with the ref, in fact it’s expected um, to argue with the ref and the players and try to intimidate and shout people into believing anything. Distraction is encouraged, um but you can not, ya know if the ref just screws it up, then the ref screws it up, but whatever the ref calls is what it is. Um, and so you can try to bribe, distract um, have them look elsewhere, whatever else, right? Um, I think that’s mostly the rules of the game. Usually, we would just tell people, ‘let’s get started we’ll figure it out.’ And then they get called for everything and go ‘what happened? What happened? What happened? How did I lose a life?’ Um, and I guess the only other thing, the only other rule that’s in there is if you get down to a single man on a team, um then you go into single man rules which meant you could not actively block, you had to let him have a chance to shoot. So you could get a life on somebody by shooting the object ball in the pocket, which would usually be a um life on the previous, could be on the subsequent if they didn’t move fast enough that would be a judgment call on the ref. Um, but usually, there’s also a finesse game, where you can, um, learn how to hit the ball – and none of this is with sticks, I don’t know if I said that.”

SW: “Right, you’re just throwing the ball across the table.”

GW: “Rolling, not throwing. Because if the ball leaves the table that’s gross buffoonery and you lose a life. Um, but you could, you could shoot the ball such that you had the spin on it right and just enough, just enough kiss on the object ball, that it would, the object ball would only go six inches, but then the, the shooter ball would go all the way to the other end of the table, and stop. So if the guy is trying to block you, and block your shot, right? He can’t hit your arm or anything but he can visually block and make it hard for you to see and generally just get in your way. But if you get it where you can flick it and the object ball only moves six inches but then the other ball goes way down then he doesn’t have enough time to go get the ball and shoot it again, right? There’s also a special rule called a double kiss rule, where the object ball doesn’t have to travel a total of six inches if you double kiss it, which means you hit it, it comes off a bumper, and you hit it again with the object ball, right?”

SW: “That sounds very difficult.”

GW: “Well you learn to play this little game, right? Right up against the bumper, because you can go ‘bink’ and it goes ‘tick tick’ and the object ball stops, right? And so usually if you’re starting to play that game, it’s a ‘tick tick’ ‘tick tick’ ‘tick tick’ ‘tick tick’ ‘tick tick’ ya know two guys standing right next to each other and then eventually a guy’ll get a chance where he can either put it in a pocket or, ya know he’ll do a chop shot like this, which’ll go ‘tick tick’ and then the shooter ball goes way down on other end of the table and the other guy doesn’t have enough room to go get it, right? So, um, so yeah, a game, ya know if you have four or five people on a side, I’ve seen as much as twelve people on a side.”

SW: “Oh no.”

GW: “Yeah, ya know if you’ve got four or five people on a side games usually last about 10 or 12 minutes. And then the losers buy the beverage of choice for their partners, their opponent on the other side. And somebody, usually the first one out, um is the guy that, um has to buy the ref a beer. Uh, first guy that loses a life goes and buys the ref a beer. Oh, and if there are any virgins left on the winning team then it’s double. Meaning they haven’t lost any lives. So,, if you have a virgin on the team then the other team has to buy you double. It kinda levels the playing field after a couple of games.”

SW: “Yeah, that would make sense!”

GW: “Right? And then you can get into combat rules which are really, it’s a bar room fight with a pool table in the middle.”

SW: “Great! So you play this, what? When you’re at the bar?”

GW: “Mmhmm.”

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Analysis:

Crud has elaborate rules that, in the informant’s wife’s words, “no one actually understands.” Its first purpose is a fun social activity to bring together everyone at the bar and get them all involved in a common goal. Secondly, it reinforces the drinking culture that is a major aspect of fighter pilot life. It also acts as an identifier of insider members of the group, since only fighter pilots would know the elaborate rules. The fact that there is some actual skill involved, and that GW made sure to highlight the skill aspect, shows that much of fighter pilot culture is showing off skill and proving your technical abilities and prowess to other members of the group. The rules seem somewhat intentionally vague, so that players and refs can argue over whether someone actually broke the rules or not. This might show the fighter pilot spirit of equality, both in everyone deciding the rules together, and the rules being subtly changed to help or hinder players who might be significantly better or worse than those they are playing with.