Knucklebones

A collection of jacks within the permanent collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

Knucklebones, Tali, Fivestones, or Jacks, is a game of ancient origin, usually played with five small objects, or ten in the case of jacks. Originally the "knucklebones" (actually the astragalus, a bone in the ankle, or hock[1]) were those of a sheep, which were thrown up and caught in various manners. Modern knucklebones consist of six points, or knobs, proceeding from a common base, and are usually made of metal or plastic. The winner is the first player to successfully complete a prescribed series of throws, which, though similar, differ widely in detail. The simplest throw consists in tossing up one stone, the jack, and picking up one or more from the table while it is in the air. This continues until all five stones have been picked up. Another throw consists in tossing up first

History

A red-figure pottery (terracotta) "kerch" style lekythos depicting a nymph and satyr playing at knucklebones, with two Eros figures (standing between Aphrodite) offering laurel wreaths of victory to the nymph and to a youth, c. 350 BC
Roman statue of girl playing astragaloi

The origin of knucklebones is closely connected with that of dice, of which knucklebones is probably a more primitive form. Sophocles, in a written fragment of one of his works, ascribed the invention of knucklebones to the mythical figure Palamedes. Who taught it to his Greek countrymen during the Trojan War. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey contain allusions to games similar in character to knucklebones. Pausanius in his Description of Greece (2.20.3) tells of a temple of Fortune in Corinth in which Palamedes made an offering of his newly invented game. Childs games were a common temple offering at some temples.

According to a still more ancient tradition, Zeus, perceiving that Ganymede longed for his playmates upon Mount Ida, gave him Eros for a companion and golden dibs with which to play. He even condescended to sometimes join in the game (Apollonius). It is significant, however, that both Herodotus and Plato ascribe a foreign origin to the game. Plato, in Phaedrus, names the Egyptian god Thoth as its inventor, while Herodotus relates that the Lydians, during a period of famine in the days of King Atys, originated this game and indeed almost all other games, with the exception of draughts.[2]

There were two methods of playing in ancient times. The first, and probably the primitive method, consisted in tossing up and catching the bones on the back of the hand, very much as the game is played today. In ancient Rome, it was called tali (knucklebones): a painting excavated from Pompeii, currently housed in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, depicts the goddesses Latona, Niobe, Phoebe, Aglaia and Hileaera, with the last two being engaged in playing a game of knucklebones. According to an epigram of Asclepiodotus, astragali were given as prizes to schoolchildren, and we are reminded of Plutarch's anecdote of the youthful Alcibiades, who, when a teamster threatened to drive over some of his knucklebones that had fallen into the wagonruts, boldly threw himself in front of the advancing team. This simple form of the game was generally only played by women and children, and was called penta litha or five-stones. There were several varieties of this game besides the usual toss and catch; one being called tropa, or hole-game, the object of which was to toss the bones into a hole in the earth. Another was the simple game of odd or even.

A 1734 Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin painting depicting a girl playing knucklebones

The second, probably derivative, form of the game was one of pure chance, the stones being thrown upon a table, either from the hand or from a cup, and the values of the sides upon which they fell were counted. The shape of the pastern bones used for astragaloi as well as for the tali of the Romans, with whom knucklebones was also popular, determined the manner of counting.

Pastern bones

The pastern bone of a sheep, goat, or calf has two rounded ends upon which it cannot stand and two broad and two narrow sides, one of each pair being concave and one convex. The convex narrow side, called chios or "the dog", was counted as 1, the convex broad side as 3, the concave broad side as 4, and the concave narrow side as 6.

Four astragali were used and 35 different scores were possible in a single throw. Many of these throws received distinctive names such as: Aphrodite, Midas, Solon, and Alexander. Among the Romans, some of the names were: Venus, King, and Vulture. The highest throw in Greece counted 40, and was called the Euripides. It was probably a combination throw, since more than four sixes could not be thrown at a single time. The lowest throw, both in Greece and Rome, was the Dog.

Modern game

A set of jacks

The modern game may use a rubber ball, and the knucklebones (jacks), typically a set of ten, are made of metal or plastic. There are variants of how the players decide who goes first: it is usually through "flipping," (the set of jacks is placed in cupped hands, flipped to the back of the hands, and then back to cupped hands again; the player who keeps the most from falling goes first), but may be via ip dip, or eeny, meeny, miny, moe, or a variant thereof. To set up the game, the jacks are scattered loosely into the play area. The players in turn bounce the ball off the ground, pick up jacks, and then catch the ball before it bounces for a second time.

The number of jacks to be picked up is pre-ordained and sequential; at first you must pick up one ("onesies"), next two ("twosies"), and so on, depending on the total number of jacks included. The number may not divide evenly, and there may be jacks left over. If the player chooses to pick up the leftover jacks first, one variation is to announce this by saying "horse before carriage" or "queens before kings." The playing area should be decided between the players since there is no official game rule regarding that.

The winning player is the one to pick up the largest number of jacks, and the game can be made more challenging by playing with fifteen or twenty jacks (two sets). Regardless of the total number of jacks in play, the player who gets to the highest game wins. Game one is usually single bounce (onesies through tensies); game two is chosen by whoever "graduates" from game one first, and so on. Some options for subsequent games are "double bounces," "pigs in the pen," "over the fence," "eggs in the basket" (or "cherries in the basket,") "flying Dutchman," "around the world," etc. Some games, such as "Jack be nimble," are short games which are not played in the onesies-to-tensies format.

Children in Nepal playing astragaloi

Variations

A variation of this game known as "gobs" was played in Cork, Ireland, in the 1950s using five pebbles (often quartz) found on the beach.

A similar game is played in many African countries using pebbles without a rubber ball.

Another variation played in Australia and New Zealand uses five knucklebones from a lamb shank or colored plastic objects that resemble the knucklebones. The player tosses the five jacks in the air, catching as many as possible on the back of the hand, then tosses the jacks on the back of the hand, flips the hand over, and catches as many as possible in the palm. The player then puts down all but one jack which he or she has caught and tosses the last jack in the air and attempts to pick up each of the remaining jacks that are lying on the ground before catching the tossed jack in the same hand. In the first round, the jacks are picked up one at a time, in the second two at a time, and so on. Variations include swapping hands, playing with one's eyes closed, clapping quickly before picking up the jack, "catching flies" (where the jack that is tossed in air is caught overhand after the one on the ground has been picked up), and playing with a second set of jacks placed between the fingers – first one, then two etc.

Another variation, played by Israeli school-age children, is known as kugelach or Chamesh Avanim (חמש אבנים, "five rocks"). Instead of jacks and a rubber ball, five die-sized metal cubes are used. The game cube is tossed in the air rather than bounced.[3]

In the North East of England, the game with five cubes (wooden rather than metal) is called "chucks". A similar game to the Israeli game above used to be played in the Midlands and was called "snobs".

A very similar variation called beş taş (or "five rocks" again), is played by children in Turkey with five pebbles. One pebble is tossed into the air and the player tries to pick up those on the ground one by one, then two by two, and so on, before catching the pebble in the air.

In Brazil, there are two common variations of the game. The first is similar to the Turkish version and played with pebbles. In the second, the pebbles are substituted by small cloth bags filled with either grains (the most popular being rice), or sand, and sewn shut.

In modern-day Korea, a similar form of jacks called gonggi (pronounced, gong-gee) is played by children. The differences there are that they use five weighted plastic "stones" called gonggi and the game is played without a rubber ball. The goal of the game is to throw one gonggi into the air, snatch up another on the ground, and catch the first gonggi before it hits the floor. The game progresses in this fashion, similar to jacks, until all gonggi have been picked up. Then the gonggi are placed in the palm of the hand, then flipped onto the back of the hand. Depending on how many land on the player's hand, the player adds a certain number of years. At the beginning of the game the players will determine how many years they are playing to.

"Chinese Jacks" were a popular version of jacks in the United States in the 1980s. They are made up of small, colorful, linkable plastic rings that can also be used for making friendship jewelry, chains, hopscotch, diving toys, etc. To play the game the player first makes five jacks by linking nine rings around one center ring. Then the game play is very similar to gonggi.

The "taba game" (Jogo do Osso, in Portuguese) is an alternative name for knucklebones. It is a very popular game played by the gauchos of 19th-century Argentina and Rio Grande do Sul. The game originates from Greece. The game is played in a field where the taba or talus bone is thrown to the air. Upon falling, the people making bets guess if it will fall upward (suerte) or backward (culo).

See also

References

  1. ↑ FN David. Games, Gods and Gambling: A history of probability and statistical ideas. London: Charles Griffin & Co., 1962. rpt New York; Dover, 1998. p 2.
  2. ↑ Herodotus, The Histories, Book I: 94
  3. ↑ Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here
Wikisource has the text of the 1905 New International Encyclopedia article Jack-Stones.
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