Category Archives: Game

Assassin Game

Nationality: USA
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/21
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

DR used to go to an academic summer camp in New England from 7th through 10th grade. Every year, they would play a game called “Assassin.” If you wanted to play, you would sign up with the person running it. They would give you a spoon and some ID number, as well as another player as a “target.” You can only tag your target when they’re not holding their spoon, which is “assassinating” them. After assassinating someone, you inherit their target, and the game continues until there is only one player remaining.

Informant background

DR is a student at the University of Southern California. He is from Sudbury, MA.

Performance context

This story was told during a folklore collection event that I set up with a diversity of members from the USC men’s Ultimate Frisbee team. We were in a classic folklore collection setting: sharing drinks around a campfire, in a free flowing conversation.

Analysis

There are some games (in fact, most games) which are entirely bounded in space and time to a certain restricted area – e.g., a basketball game on a basketball court; a game of chess to its board. However, games like Assassin are “always on” – in other words, a player must be ready at any time to play. This kind of game seems most common in schools and summer camps, where a large amount of children all live together. This is probably because children most enjoy the excitement of always being in the game, and also being in the same space for much or all of the day allows the element of persistence and vigilance to come into play.

Elephant Game

Nationality: USA
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/21
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

JD described a game called Elephant, where the person “in the know” running the game (the Teller) continues saying things following a hidden pattern until the pattern is found out by the guessers. JD learned this game from his friend PJ from Las Vegas, who “knows a bunch of these games.”

Some selections from our rounds:

JD: “There’s two elephants in the fire. There’s one elephant on Cy’s shoulder. How many elephants are there?”

               Answer: “There are 5 elephants.”

JD: “There’s 4 elephants in the big ol thing of IPA. There’s 2 elephants on that tree. How many elephants?”

               Answer: “There are 3 elephants.”

We went through about 10 rounds before we started to figure out the pattern.

The answer is that however many words are in the question asking how many elephants there are, is the number of elephants.

Informant background

JD is a student at the University of Southern California. He is from Las Vegas, NV.

Performance context

This story was told during a folklore collection event that I set up with a diversity of members from the USC men’s Ultimate Frisbee team. We were in a classic folklore collection setting: sharing drinks around a campfire, in a free flowing conversation.

Analysis

These interactive riddle games are often constructed so that the answer appears more complicated than it actually is. They often involve pointing out concrete objects, people, or places, so that the guesser’s attention is diverted to those specifics, while the real answer is something more abstract about the words used or delivery of the speaker. This paradigm shows up across almost all of the question-and-answer riddle games I have experienced.

Little Green Door

Nationality: USA
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/21
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

DR learned this question-and-answer riddle game from camp. The participants repeatedly ask if arbitrary items can “pass through the Little Green Door” until the participants figure out the pattern of what can and cannot pass through.

Some selections from our rounds:

CT: “Can I pass through the Little Green Door?”

DR: “No.”

BM: “Can my beer pass through the Little Green Door?”

DR: “Yes.”

After about 20 rounds, the answer was deduced: anything with a double letter in it can pass through, anything else cannot.

Informant background

DR is a student at the University of Southern California. He is from Sudbury, MA.

Performance context

This story was told during a folklore collection event that I set up with a diversity of members from the USC men’s Ultimate Frisbee team. We were in a classic folklore collection setting: sharing drinks around a campfire, in a free flowing conversation.

Analysis

These interactive riddle games are often constructed so that the answer appears more complicated than it actually is. They often involve pointing out concrete objects, people, or places, so that the guesser’s attention is diverted to those specifics, while the real answer is something more abstract about the words used or delivery of the speaker. This paradigm shows up across almost all of the question-and-answer riddle games I have experienced.

The Minus One Horse

Nationality: China
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Shanghai China
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Backgrounds:

P-M was born in China and finsihed his middle school and high school in LA, California. He is currently studying at USC. P-M shared this piece of folklore with me after I asked him whether he know of any interesting folklore when we were chatting after dinner.

Some Background Knowledge:

三国杀（san guo sha）is a very popular board game in China, which is based on historical events in late Han Dynasty. In this game, there is an equipment called 减一马（jian yi ma）, word to word translation, minus one horse. The function doesn’t matter.


The Main Piece:

P-M: Bro, what should I say if someone thinks only kids who cannot make it into good universities in China study abroad?

Me: WTF? I though only people who cannot afford studying abroad go to Chinese universities.

P-M: I’ll give him jian yi ma.

Me: What does that mean?

P-M: Word by word, he’ll have minus one horse. (in chinese, the word “horse”, ma, sounds super similar to the word “mother”, ma) Every San Guo Sha player knows that.

Me: Duuuude!! That’s sooooo cool.

Analysis:

P-M gives the other guy minus one horse, which means minus one mother. In other words, his mother is dead. This is a very offensive curse in the Chinese language. However, by using a card in a game to refer to this curse, it seems a lot more gentle and humorous, and therefore more acceptable. This shows how board games has influenced our everyday life and how curse words can be expressed in humorous ways by refering to games.

The Finger Circle

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Oregon
Performance Date: 4/24/21
Primary Language: English

Intro

The following is a folk game that I used to play with my friend back in high school. We both went to school together in Oregon, from middle school through high school so I have known him for a while. The following are the rules of how to play the infamous finger circle game. My friend is still at home so I asked him to retell the story while I recorded him. This is a direct transcribed script of what was said in the story, with the various “umm’s” and “uhh’s” omitted. 

The Game

“Alright, what exactly do you want me to talk about? Like just the game itself?”

Me: Ya, just say how the game actually works and where you learned it and stuff.

“Ohh, okay, so the classic finger circle game is something I learned… hmm, probably before high school I think, I’m not really sure. It’s just kinda one of those games you remember but you never know who did it to you first. So how it works is, you make a circle with your fingers… the pointer finger and thumb. And then you have your other three fingers, they stick out like this, *does it*. Oh it’s like the dumb thing that people always claim is like the symbol for white power. No people. It’s the finger circle game, stop ruining it. We don’t want another Pepe the Frog. Okay right, back to the game. So you make your hand like this right, and then you put it below your waist like this, *does, and then goes to punch me*. Ha! Categorically outplayed nerd.” 

Me: Bruh stop, *laughing*, can you just explain what happens. They can’t see you this is just, it’s just the audio, not a video.

“Okay, so what you people need to hear, I put the finger circle down here *tries to get me again*, [name] looked at it, and so I legally now get to punch him.”

Me: Okay but say more, like what are the actual rules.

“Oh my, okay, so I think it’s different based on who you play it with and who they got it from, but the way I play is you make the finger circle and then you put it below your waist and if another person looks at it then you get to punch them. Other people might have it be like, below the knee or something but that’s dumb. Then of course there’s the variant rules, but I don’t know if they’re ready for that.”

Me: Dude just tell me. 

“Okay okay, so then there’s this other rule that if the person that sees it can stick their finger in the hole before the other person gets rid of it, then that person gets to punch the first person twice. Then, ya I know, so many rules, then, if the original finger circle guy can close his fingers around the second’s finger, that guy gets to punch the victim three times. Let’s see… I don’t think I’m missing anything. There aren’t really winners, but if you can outsmart the person into looking at it then you won, like I just did, ha loser. Is that all I need to say?”

Me: Yup, that’s good.

Analysis

This piece of folklore was something that I knew about originally, but hearing it from another person was also interesting. My friend talked about the different versions of the game, which I knew, but we had always just played the one way: i.e. below the waist and including the variant rules. Also, when I say rules, they aren’t written rules. They are just kind of passed along rules to how the game should work. Some people online may have written the rules but we don’t, and I’m pretty sure most people aren’t, googling the rules to the finger circle game. Mostly, because it doesn’t matter that much, but also because each group kind of has their own rules that they play by.