Games Parlor Kolonial Kids

Overview	Parlor	Group	Outdoor
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Parlor games were generally played indoors on rainy days. They were also popular at birthday and tea parties. The main object of parlor games was to have fun. Sometimes the people watching the games had more fun than the people who were playing!

Silly Games: These parlor games require no skill. Their only purpose is to make people laugh. Try them and see if you think they are funny.

• The Cudgel Game: This game was a favorite among boys in the late 1800s. A cudgel is a stout club. Instead of real cudgels, the blindfolded players are given rolled-up newspapers. They lie on their stomach, head to head, holding each other by the left hand. One player calls out "Are you ready?" When the other player replies "yes," the first player tries to swat him or her with the newspaper. Since the swatter is blindfolded, he or she usually misses. The other player then asks "Are you ready?" and tries to whack his or her friend. There is no point to this silly game, but it is fun to play and watch.
  


• Pinch, No Smiling: Pinch, No Smiling was a parlor game that tested self-control. To play Pinch, No Smiling, everyone sits in a circle. One by one, each player turns to a neighbor, and pinches his or her nose. The first player to smile or laugh has to pay a forfeit such as jewelry or a favorite toy.
       After everyone in the circle has been pinched, all the losers must "pay" to get their forfeits back. The wheeling and dealing is as much fun as playing the actual game! A player buys back his or her forfeit by performing a silly trick, such as acting like an animal, hopping around the room on one foot, or staying perfectly still and silent for a period of time. The winners of the game decide what the losers must do!

Guessing Games: Parents encouraged their children to play guessing games because these games were good brain exercises! Charades and Twenty Questions are still played at parties today.

• Charades: Charades is a fun game to play when people come to visit. Players take turns being the actor. Each player writes down a word, name, or phrase on a piece of paper and puts it in a hat. The first actor takes a piece of paper from the hat. He or she must act out the mystery word or phrase within one or two minutes. Sometimes the actor gives clues such as pulling on an ear, a gesture that means "sounds like," and then acts out a word that rhymes with the word on the paper. The player who guesses the word or phrase is the next actor.
  


• Blind Man's Bluff: This is a good game for four or more people. To play Blind Man's Buff, pick one person to be It. That person is blindfolded and stands in the middle of the room, perhaps after being spun around a few times to disorient him.
       There are two variations of this game:
  • The other players form a circle around the blindfolded person within a confined area. The blindfolded person moves about to catch one of the players (who are not allowed to move). The first person caught by the blindfolded person becomes the next blindfolded person.
  • The other players dart around It, who tries to tag them. They try to get as close as possible to It without being caught.
  
       Another variant is when the player who is It catches another player, he tries to guess who it is by touching their face and hair. If he doesn't guess on the first try, other players can give hints. When he guesses their name, that person becomes the new It.
  


• Hunt the Slipper: This is a game for six or more players, who sit in a circle. One player (the hunter) leaves while the others hide a slipper or other object. When the hunter returns, the other players pass the object around secretly while the hunter is not looking. The hunter is allowed to ask questions and has three guesses on the whereabouts of the object. When the slipper is located, the hunter exchanges places with the player who has the object and the game starts over.
  


• Twenty Questions: The settlers loved to pass the time playing Twenty Questions. It is still a fun game. One person thinks of a person, place, or thing. The other players try to guess who or what it is by asking questions that can be answered "yes" or "no." For example, a peron may be thinking of a blacksmith. If another player asks "Are you thinking of an animal?" the answer would be "no." If the next question is "Are you thinkning of a person?" the player answers "yes." The game continues until the players discover who or what the person is thinkning of or until twenty questions have been asked — whichever comes first.
  


• Dumb Crambo: Two teams are needed for this game. Team 2 leaves the room while Team 1 picks a word, such as "pie," as well as a rhyming word to offer as a clue. Team 2 re-enters the room and is told that the secret word rhymes with "sky." Team 2's job is to act out the secret word. If the players on Team 2 are wrong, the Team 1 players hiss loudly. Team 2 keeps acting until the players guess the right word. Then it is Team 1's turn to leave the room while Team 2 picks a new word.

Word Games: Games that involved letters and words helped children learn language skills. Even young children could play some word games once they knew the letters of the alphabet. Word games were popular with parents because they were educational and children were not rowdy while they played.

• I Have a Basket: To play this game, the players form a circle. The first player begins the game by saying "I have a basket." The person beside him or her asks "What's inside?" The first person has to name something that starts with the letter A. The second person has to name an object that begins with the letter B, and so on. The game gets interesting when the players reach the letters Q and X. What Q word would you put into your basket?
  


• Cupid's Leaving: Cupid's Leaving is similar to I Have a Basket. To begin, all the players pick a letter, for example, S. The first player calls out "Cupid's leaving," and the next person asks "How?" The first person has to think of a word that starts with S and ends in "ing" to describe how Cupid is leaving. He or she might answer "singing." The second player then calls out "Cupid's leaving," and the third player asks "How?" The second player might say "sobbing." The game continues until someone is unable to think of an answer. The players then choose a new letter.
  


• Anagrams: To play Anagrams, children used small squares of paper with letters of the alphabet written on one side. (You can use the tiles from a Scrabble game.) All the squares are placed face down on a table.
       The players take turns turning over one square each. As soon as someone sees enough letters to make a word, he or she calls out the word and takes the letters. New letters are turned over. If any of these can be added to an old word to make a new word, a person can call out the new word and "steal" the letters from the person who holds them. Players are also allowed to rearrange letters to make new words. Anagram players must think fast to hold on to their letters!
  


• Taboo: Taboo players decide on a letter of the alphabet that will be forbidden in the game. One person is chosen to be It. The other players ask It questions that might force him or her to use the forbidden letter. For example, if the letter D were chosen, one player might ask "What animal has hoofs?" It would answer "a lamb." If It answered "deer," he or she would have used the forbidden letter. The questioning continues until IT is forced to use the taboo letter. In a more difficult version of the game, the person who is It must answer in sentence form without using the taboo letter anywhere in the sentence: "The little lamb follows Mary to school on its four little hoofs."

Table Games: Some table games required a steady hand or quick wit to win. In other games, victory depended on the luck of the draw.

• Dominoes: Playing dominoes was a favorite pastime in the late 1800s. The game is still played today. Dominoes are flat, rectangular blocks called "tiles" or "bones." Each tile has two groups of dots on one side. The dots range in number from zero to six. Tiles with the same number of dots on both ends are called doublets.
       One dominoes game is called Draw. The tiles are put in the middle of the table, face down. Each player draws three tiles and looks at them. The rest of the dominoes are left face down in the "boneyard." Whoever has a doublet with the most dots lays it on the table. The second player puts a domino with a matching number of dots against the doublet. Doublets are put down sideways, as shown on the left.
       The next player must lay a match at the free end of a tile. If he or she cannot, the player must turn over new dominoes until a match is found. The first player to lay down all of his or her dominoes wins.
  


• Tiddlywinks: Almost everyone has heard of tiddlywinks, but few people know how this game is actually played. Players use a disk called a shooter to flip smaller disks called winks into a cup that sits in the middle of the playing area. The object of the game is to be the first player to sink all of his or her disks into the cup. In the past, players took this game very seriously and practiced flipping winks in their spare time.
  




• Pick-up Sticks (Jackstraws): Pick-up sticks, or jackstraws, have been played for hundreds of years, and was a very popular game among North American Settlers. To play, all you need is a pile of straws or wood splinters, although fancy versions of the game with whittled sticks in different colors can be purchased or made.. Some fancy pick-up-stick games had ivory "straws." Modern versions of jackstraws use wooden or plastic sticks. Hold the bundle of straws perpendicular to the ground (the straws point straight up) about 1 foot off the ground.  Drop the straws, letting them land in a messy pile. Each player takes a turn removing one stick from the pile. The challenge is to do so without moving any of the other sticks. You can only move the straw you are trying to pick up.  If any other straws wiggle or fall, your turn is over. The player who has the most straws when the pile is gone is the winner.
  


• Cards:
  
  
  In the early 1800s, most children's card games were designed to be educational. Card games helped children learn about math, geography, history, and science. Some card games even taught girls about cooking.      In 1819 a Philadelphia playing-card manufacturer, James Humphreys, decided to alter the faces of the cards he was ahout to produce. He replaced the conventional Kings with American political and military leaders -- George Washington became the King of Hearts, ,John Quincy Adams the King of Diamonds, Andrew Jackson the King of Spades and Thomas Jefferson the King of Clubs. He also substituted Greek and Roman goddessesl for the Queens, and famous (or infamous) American Indian chiefs for Jacks.
  
  
  
        In the 1850s, people began to play card games for fun. Decks of cards were very colorful. Our Birds, Old Maid and Old Bachelor, and Dr. Busby were lively card games. Parents did not allow their children to play with regular playing cards because they did not want to encourage gambling. (The card game Our Birds taught about the birds of North America; Today the game Old Maid and Old Bachelor is called Old Maid; Dr. Busby was invented in the United States, but it quickly became popular in Europe.)

Board Games: Some of the board games the settlers played had been around for centuries. Chess, checkers, and backgammon are examples of old favorites, but many new board games were also created in the 1800s. Some helped players learn about history, geography, or science. Others taught children the value of working hard and behaving well.
     In most board games, players moved pieces across squares on a board. To determine how many moves they could make, they spun a teetotum or a number disk (i.e. a spinner). Many people did not use dice because dice were associated with gambling.

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  The Traveller's Tour through the United States : In 1822, the New York publishers F&R Lockwood published this game, the first board game developed and printed in the U.S. Unlike other games, it was also invented in the USA rather than being a copy of a British game, as many later ones were. The board is a map of the United States c. 1822, the westernmost states being Missouri and Louisiana. Because dice were frowned upon as instruments of the horrible vice of gambling, a teetotum was included, used to randomly yield a number from 1 to 8. This is used to determine the first player.
  
  
  
  
  
  
       Lines are drawn on the map to connect cities in a continuous path which players must follow. However, the cities are not named, but numbered. Players moved their pieces along the path around a map of the U.S., stopping at the numbered cities in the 24 states and four territories that made up the country at the time. At each stop, players tried to name the city the point represented; if playing the advanced version, its population. If they failed, they lost a turn and had to try again in the next round. The first to reach New Orleans (population 10,000) won.
  
  
  
  
  
       According to historian Daniel Kilbride, the game presented a genteel, nationalistic view of the country to accompany its geography lesson—the manual described the U.S. as "by far the finest portion of the western continent . . . with respect to wealth, fertility, civilization, and refinement." A copy is apparently still in existence and archived at the American Antiquarian Society.
  





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  Nine Man Morris: Also known as Merels, this is one of the oldest board games, going back at least to the ancient Egyptians. This is a game for two players.
  
  • Equipment: game board, nine men for each player (use two different colors of beans, or buttons, or stones)
  
  
  • Object: To remove your opponents markers from the board. The player who ends the game with the most men remaining on the board wins. Or, play until 1 player only has 2 markers, and so cannot make a "mill" (3 in a row).
  
  
  • To Play: Each player takes turns placing his markers at intersecting lines. When one player builds a "mill" by placing three men in a row, he may remove one of his opponents men. After all nine men have been played, each player then slides one marker to any adjacent intersection of lines.
         You can download the board for this game from the Downloads page (Free CS membership required)
  
  


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  Fox & Geese: In colonial times, this game was played by two people on a checkerboard with 17 geese and a fox. The goal of the game is to "shut up' the fox so that it cannot move. The fox moves in a straight line in any direction. The geese move only forwards or sideways. The fox may jump a goose and remove it from the board, but the geese may not jump a fox. The fox wins if it breaks the line of geese in front of it; it loses if it is cornered and blocked in.
       Today this game is played as a form of solitaire in which thirty two pegs are placed on the board so that only the fox's starting position in the center is empty. The player then jumps, removing the peg that was passed over. Play continues until only one peg remains on the board. The player wins the game if the last move puts the last peg into the fox hole. Only one peg may be moved at a time, and no peg may jump another unless it stands next to it without an intervening hole.
       You can download the board for this game from the Downloads page (Free CS membership required)

Holiday Games: Holidays provided a chance for settlers to get together. They looked forward to special days such as Christmas, Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving, and Hallowe'en. Get-togethers usually meant lots of food and fun games!

• Famous Romances: The game of Famous Romances was popular at Valentine's Day parties. Each player has a heart stuck to his or her back. The player does not know what name is on his or her heart, only that it is part of a famous couple. The game is played like Twenty Questions. Each person must first find out his or her identity by asking the other players questions that can be answered with a yes or no. "Am I a man?" "Am I still alive?" "Is my partner a king?" The next step is to locate the partner. Examples of famous couples are Adam and Eve and Anthony and Cleopatra. Fictional couples such as Superman and Lois Lane or Beauty and the Beast can also be used to play the game.
  


• The Cobweb Game: The Cobweb Game reached its greatest popularity at Christmas parties after the Civil War, but it was around long before then. A beautiful spider made of wire and other materials hung from the ceiling. Long pieces of string or ribbon — one for each player — were attached to the spider, then wound around the room in a tangled web. The strings reached under the furniture, through doors, and even up and down stairs! The object of the game was to follow one piece of string from the spider to the end, where a Christmas present was waiting. (The Cobweb Game was the highlight of many Christmas parties. In some homes, the spider and its colorful ribbons were used as the main Christmas decoration, instead of a tree!)