Alan Down - Montegue Blister’s Strange Games - and other odd things to do with your time

A silly playground game, the finger-wrestling game of Peanutsat least has the advantage of developing your finger and wrist muscles.

Two players face each other, raise both their hands and interlink their fingers. With their hands clasped in this fashion, battle now commences as each attempts to bend back the other’s hands and, obviously, avoid having their own bent. To make the game fair, hands need to be kept at shoulder height throughout. The game finishes when one player’s hands are successfully bent back or one gives up with an anguished shout of ‘peanuts’.

If you ever sit in your office or schoolroom bored out of your mind and twirling your pen around your fingers, perhaps now is the time to take this practice more seriously. Learn a new trick or two, because the serious finger-bending sport of Pen Spinningis a growing one.

Having originated in Japan, competitive pen spinning then spread to Korea and the US, and has now developed set moves such as rapid end to end passes, twirls, the thumbaround (the pen travels 360 degrees around the thumb), and nail spins (the pen spins on a fingernail), and even jumps. Keen pen spinners use specially modified and weighted pens, and to see a quality spinner in action is to see the hand working at the upper limits of its capabilities—fingers and pen both blur. The US-based Universal Pen Spinning Board (see Internet Resources) hold regular, videoed competitions where spinners are judged by their peers on style, tricks and overall routine.

Unfortunately, there is yet to be a serious take up of table-top finger drumming.

The Japanese have Judo; the Chinese have Kung Fu; in Gloucestershire they kick shins.

The British Shin Kicking Championshipstake place annually in Chipping Campden on the first Friday after the second May Bank Holiday as part of the Cotswold Olimpick Games. Dress rules are very simple and elegant: competitors wear long trousers with straw protective padding attached to their shins underneath (otherwise it would be plain crazy). White shepherds’ smocks complete the fighting costume. Each player then holds onto his opponent’s shoulders and the kicking begins.

Rules dictate that no kicks are allowed above knee level, and, whilst kicking, each player must try to wrestle his opponent to the ground. This has to be achieved during the process of kicking, otherwise it is not a valid wrestle down.

The long-since forgotten, but analogous, sport of Clog Shin Kicking was popular in the mining towns around Manchester in the mid-nineteenth century. Then, men were men and kicked shins whilst they were totally naked except for the heavy wooden clogs on their feet. Contests were hard fought and bloody. Some competitors bent the rules by soaping themselves up first, thus making themselves more difficult to grab hold of.

If Shin Kicking appeals but is a little too violent for your liking, you could always try the gentler, modern-day equivalent of Toe Fencing. In this sport players, once again, clasp each other by the shoulders but attempt to stamp on the other’s toes before their own are squashed.

If Rock, Paper, Scissors is the king of playground hand games, Slapsies, or Slaps, is its boorish, dysfunctional half-brother who’s heading for Borstal. There are records of it being played in the 1940s, but its popularity fluctuates and presently it is making something of a comeback.

For two people playing, both hold their hands as if praying but with arms stretched out in front of them and fingertips touching. Each then takes it in turn to try to slap the back of one of their opponent’s hands before they can be with-drawn. If they succeed, they get another go. If they miss, their opponent has their turn, and so on.

If a player withdraws their hands three times when a slap has not been attempted, their opponent has a free slap (usually it is delivered with the utmost venom and is therefore very painful).

The term ‘tipsies’ is shouted if the striking player catches the fingertips of the slappee. This still counts as a hit and he gets another go.

Play continues until a player’s will to go on disappears as his hands glow an ever deeper red.

Slapsies is in the unusual position of being a hand game with no official governing body and no organised championships as yet.

An interesting Slapsies variation is My Mother Says.

For two players: each places their hands alternately on top of one another’s on a firm surface, such as a table, as if they were playing My Mother Says That You Are This High (where players all place their hands together in a pile then pull them out and on top whilst chanting the phrase, until the moment when one player’s hand movement corresponds with ‘High’ and so becomes ‘It’). Now, with their hands in position, the player whose hand is at the bottom must withdraw it as swiftly as possible and attempt a hard slap on the topmost hand. Obviously the player whose hand is exposed must try to withdraw it, avoiding the slap and hopefully causing the player in motion to slap his own hand with force. Play now alternates with the hand at the bottom of the pile having the next go. The faster the game is played, the more confusing, and often painful, it becomes.

There is a superb online computer simulation of Slapsies called Operation Slaps, which allows you to play slapsies virtually against a friend or against a computer opponent. In this online game you can decide to be one of five different characters, ranging from Lieutenant Lindequest (a cold and cruel female, Russian, Ground Force operative) to Sergeant Shaw (a well-hard marine from Guantánamo Bay). The action is accompanied by realistic slapping sounds, brooding atmospheric music and, of course, a pain meter.

The dull-witted game of Slapheadsis like the human equivalent of the summerfair game of Bash the Rat (when a ‘rat’ is dropped through a drainpipe and the player has to hit it with a baseball bat as it emerges).

In Slapheads, one person stands and hold their hands—palms facing inwards—shoulder-width apart. From a standing start the second player must now quickly move their head down between their opponent’s hands and avoid being slapped. Whether it’s through fear of reprisals or slowness of reactions, the slaphead often wins and the slappee is left slapping thin air.

During play the players should wear some sort of safety helmet. Encouraging people to play old-fashioned games to help in the fight against obesity is all well and good, but it should not be at the expense of a perforated eardrum.

Man’s opposable thumbs were a giant evolutionary leap that enabled him to use a great many tools and separated him out from the lower animals. For example, in the twentieth century it was impossible to be a successful hitchhiker without one, and in more recent times mobile phone texting is infinitely harder if you don’t use your thumb. But it is in the arena of wrestling where the thumb really comes into its own.

Thumb Wrestling, or Thumb Wars, is the easiest and least violent of all the hand games listed in this book. To play, you simply clasp your opponent’s fingers and raise your thumb. Most games start with the now legendary chant: ‘1, 2, 3, 4, I declare a thumb war.’ The game can now begin or, if you want to increase the tension further, you can chant: ‘5, 6, 7, 8, try to keep your thumb straight.’

Each player then tries to force their opponent’s thumb down, and keep it down for a count of three. This is often a lot harder than it first appears, and a well-balanced match can last a long time and be quite tiring, especially if you have not trained your thumb up beforehand.