for: Jacks (1960s Japanese band)

The game originated hundreds of years ago, when the only playthings boys and girls had were materials they found near their homes. They collected small stones and animal bones and learned to use them in a game. They tossed them into the air in a way similar to today's version of the game. An older version of the game used five stone cubes made of clay, wood, ivory, bone, plastic, or other substances.

Pieces

A set of jacks consists of a number of small metal six-pointed stars, called 'jacks', and a rubber ball. Most sets contain ten jacks, but sets with as few as six, or as many as twelve or fifteen, can be found as well. The playing surface is any flat area.

Play

The players decide who goes first, usually through "flipping" (when 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 in his/her turn, goes first); or perhaps via ip dip, (or Eeny, meeny, miny, moe), or a variant. Then the jacks are scattered loosely into the play area. The players take it in turn to bounce the ball off the ground, then 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."

Winning

The winning player is the one to pick up the largest number of jacks. If playing with fifteen, that goal is rarely, if ever, achieved. If ten jacks are used, the person who gets to the highest game wins. Game 1 is usually single bounce (onesies through tensies); game 2 is chosen by whoever "graduates" to game 2 first, and so on. Some game variations 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.

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.

Another variation played by Orthodox Jewish school-age boys is known as "kugelach." Instead of jacks and a rubber ball, five dice-sized metal cubes are used. The game cube is tossed in the air rather than bounced. This is also known by Orthodox Jewish school-age children as "chamesh avanim", or "five rocks".

A very similar variation called "best tas", or "five rocks" again, is played by children in Turkey with five pebbles, where one is tossed into the air and the player tries to pick up those on the ground one by one, two by two, etc., before catching the pebble in the air.