What game is this and what are the rules?
October 8, 2010 7:58 AM   Subscribe

When I was in high school my friends would play this game that involved the following: take a wooden broom; saw off the head; saw the remaining stick into two pieces, one long and one short (about 4"); whittle the short end into a spike. Then to play the "game" you would dig a small hole into the ground and position the sharp end of the stake over it, hit the tip with the longer piece of the broom and whack it on the way up.

What I'm trying to figure out is if this game is called something and what the actual rules are. I believe it involved guessing how many jumps it would take to reach the whacked stake?

Thanks!
posted by staveitoff to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (11 answers total)
 
I think they were called "Pee Wees." First saw it in "March of the Wooden Soldiers", done by Stan Laurel.
posted by plinth at 8:04 AM on October 8, 2010


And a link to Pee Wee.
posted by plinth at 8:05 AM on October 8, 2010


It sounds similar to Siato, a Filipino game.
posted by zamboni at 8:43 AM on October 8, 2010




See also: Gilli-danda (India), Lippa (Italy).
posted by zamboni at 8:50 AM on October 8, 2010


Yeah, I was coming in to say Gil-li-danda, too. :)
posted by bardophile at 10:30 AM on October 8, 2010


We did this with a 1x1 square stick. My grandpa taught us...I'll have to ask him what the rules were.
posted by notsnot at 11:56 AM on October 8, 2010


dig a small hole into the ground and position the sharp end of the stake over it, hit the tip with the longer piece of the broom and whack it on the way up.

I'm having a lot of trouble visualising this. Could you explain it in a different way?
posted by obiwanwasabi at 4:38 PM on October 8, 2010


My bad - the Gilli-danda Wikipedia link made it a lot clearer. It sounds like a lot of fun!
posted by obiwanwasabi at 4:41 PM on October 8, 2010


This resembles old English games like Tip-cat that are usually considered to be related to baseball and cricket. (The link is to a section in David Block's Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, which is really worth reading if you're interested in old bat-and-ball games.)
posted by litlnemo at 4:52 AM on October 9, 2010


Grandpa said the name of the game, to him, was "tippy". He's at Mass right now, but when he gets home I'll get directions. But for now, at least, the name of the game is Tippy.
posted by notsnot at 1:55 PM on October 9, 2010


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