Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium

by Jessie H. Bancroft

Each player selects for himself a den; a post, tree, or other objective point may serve for this, or the corner of a building, or if in a gymnasium, a piece of apparatus.

One player opens the game by running out from his den. The second player tries to catch (tag) him. The third player may try to catch either of these two, and so on. The object of the different players is to make captives of the others, as any player caught must thereafter join his captor in trying to catch others, thus eventually aggregating the different players into parties, although each starts separately, and any one may be the nucleus of a group should he be successful in catching another player. The players may only be caught by those who issue from a den after they themselves have ventured forth. For instance, Number Two goes out to catch Number One. Number Three may catch either Two or One, but neither of them may catch him. The last player out may catch any of the other players. At any time a player may run back to his den, after which his again issuing forth gives him the advantage over all others who may then be out, as he may catch them. As the players are gradually gathered into different parties, the game becomes more concentrated, and the side wins that captures all of the players.

One player may catch only one opponent at a time.

EXCHANGE

(Numbers Change; French Blind Man's Buff)

10 to 30 or more players.

Parlor; gymnasium; playground.

One player is blindfolded and stands in the center. The other players sit in chairs in a circle around him. It is advisable to have the circle rather large. The players are numbered consecutively from one to the highest number playing.

The game may start with the players sitting in consecutive order, or they may change places at the outset to confuse the blindfold player, although the changing of places takes place very rapidly in the course of the game. The blindfold player calls out two numbers, whereupon the players bearing those numbers must exchange places, the blindfold player trying meanwhile either to catch one of the players or to secure one of the chairs. Any player so caught must yield his chair to the catcher. No player may go outside of the circle of chairs, but any other tactics may be resorted to for evading capture, such as stooping, creeping, dashing suddenly, etc.

This game may be one of the merriest possible games for an informal house party. The writer recalls one such occasion when a prominent manufacturer was blindfolded and had located two players whose numbers he called for exchange, one of them a newly graduated West Point lieutenant, the other a college senior. The business man stood in front of the chair occupied by the lieutenant and close to it, taking a crouching attitude, with his feet wide apart and arms outspread ready to grasp the victim when he should emerge from his chair. Noiselessly the lieutenant raised himself to a standing position in his chair, and then suddenly, to shouts of laughter from the company, vaulted over the head of his would-be captor, while at the same moment the collegian crawled between his feet and took possession of the chair.