Knucklebones

Knucklebones, also known as scatter jacks, snobs, astragaloi (singular: astragalus), tali, dibs, fivestones, jacks, jackstones, or jinks, among many other names,[1] is a game of dexterity played with a number of small objects that are thrown up, caught, and manipulated in various manners.

The name "knucklebones" is derived from the Ancient Greek version of the game, which uses the astragalus (a bone in the ankle, or hock) of a sheep.

[2] However, different variants of the game from various cultures use other objects, including stones, seashells, seeds, and cubes.

[3] Modern knucklebones consist of six points, or knobs, projecting 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.

Different throws have received distinctive names, such as "riding the elephant", "peas in the pod", "horses in the stable",[4] and "frogs in the well".

Sophocles, in a written fragment of one of his works, ascribed the game to the mythical figure Palamedes, who supposedly taught it to his Greek countrymen during the Trojan War.

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 jacks with which to play.

In Central Asian knucklebones, each side of the astragalus has a name (called "horse", "camel", "sheep", "goat", or "cow") and have value in divination as well as dice throwing.

It can be played with individual players or teams by both children and adults and are common entertainments in cultural festivals.

[8][9][10] A variation, played by Israeli school-age children, is known as kugelach or chamesh avanim (חמש אבנים, "five rocks").

Instead of a bouncing ball, it uses a larger stone called ina-ina ("mother") that the player tosses up into the air and must catch before it hits the ground.

During the throw, the player gathers smaller stones (also seeds or cowries) called anak ("children").

A variant of the game does not use an ina-ina stone, but players instead just throw the collected pebbles (more than one at a time in later stages).

It uses a large number of small stones, shells, or seeds (called sigay) which are tossed in the air and then caught on the back of the hand.

[17][21] In Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and Singapore, the game is called batu seremban (literally "five stones"), selambut, or serembat.

It was played by people of all ages and traditionally includes a meaningless rhythmic chant sung by the players.

Like in the Philippine version, the game uses only one hand for catching the thrown stones and has multiple stages ramping up in difficulty and mechanics.

Among Samoans and Fijians, they used around fifty to one hundred flat circular seeds of Entada gigas for the game.

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: 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 tali.

This simple form of the game was generally only played by women and children, and was called penta litha or five-stones.

[4] 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.

[28] Among Bulgarians and Gagauzs of Ukraine: ashyk[29] Versions of the game are popular among children of Amazigh origin across North Africa, and goes by a wide variety of names in the various Tamazight dialects.

The two forms of the game are present, the throw and catch version is called kapichua, payana, payanga, payanca, or payaya and it is a child's game played with stone pebbles, while the throw and gamble based on position is called jogo do osso or taba and is played with a single cow knucklebone.

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".