Carnival game

A carnival game is a game of chance or skill that can be seen at a traveling carnival, charity fund raiser, amusement arcade and amusement park, or on a state and county fair midway.

They are also commonly played on holidays such as Mardi Gras, Saint Patrick's Day, and Oktoberfest.

In a more difficult game, including the "Baseball and Basket" or "Stand the Bottle", a large prize may be awarded to any winner.

A traveling carnival may, however, be made up of multiple independent game concession owners.

The objective is to toss a coin (typically a dime or quarter) onto a horizontal board that has random marks on it.

Players place their bets on a rail mounted strip that has months, colors and holidays written on it.

The month, color or holiday that shows on the top of the thrown die, when it stops, will indicate the winner.

A game like "Duck Pond," which is geared for young children, may offer a winner every time.

These games may test a players aim at hitting a target with either a ball or a weapon.

[4] When dishonest carnival game operators found someone who they could entice to keep playing their rigged (slang term: "gaffed") game,[5] they would then "mark" the individual by patting their back with a hand that had chalk on it.

One method they use to avoid law enforcement is to give legitimate instruments or make the carnival game "fair-and-square" during testing, but rig it for other people.

[4][8] In the United States, there was a longtime tradition of carnival games the point of which was to hurt, dehumanize or denigrate Black people.

Such games included "African dodger" or "bean-em", where a Black person would stick their head through a curtain to be pelted with beanbags, eggs or baseballs, or "dunk tanks" that would drop a Black person into a tank of water if fairgoers hit a target with a ball.

In her 2020 book Caste, Isabel Wilkerson describes these games as part of "a culture of cruelty [that] made violence and mockery seem mundane and amusing", teaching and reinforcing the U.S. racial caste system through entertainment.