A game from “Titbits Book of Wrinkles”, 1938.
A game for the less athletic this week – if you can eat a trayful of chocolates in record time, you can win this one.
Tag: 1938
An easy little trick with matches from The Weekend Book, 1938.
The idea is to make two matches “kiss” with the “lady match” being lifted up, as if swept off her feet, Hollywood-style. Whittling legs is optional.
This game needs a group of people large enough to be split into two teams (to make any number of hunters and two hunted), the great outdoors and a pub lunch – what could be better?
From “The Weekend Book”, 1938.
“Outdoor active games
Man-Hunt
This is strenuous and any number can join in. It is more exciting than a paper chase, and does not litter the country with paper.
First mark out an agreed area, say six miles by one, on the map, limited by recognisable natural features, outside which the men must not go, with your starting point on one end line and a suitable pub, as your objective, in the middle of the other end line. The hunters set off later and the two men a quarter of an hour later. The hunters may not blockade the starting point nor the objective but should stretch a cordon across the area and ambush likely points in the attempt to stop the men from passing through.
You have lunch at your objective and man-hunt home. It is unsuitable for crowded suburban areas.”
Some Friday No Fun today. It’s not just swearing that was a no-no in the 1930s. Here are some card, dice and wheel games that were designated illegal way back in the midsts of time. They are “Ace of Hearts”, “Faro” (or “Pharoah”), “Bassett”, “Hazard”, “Passage” and “Roly-Poly”.
All the games have hundreds of years of provenance. “Passage” (also known as “Passe-dix”) was an ancient dice game and “Ace of Hearts” and “Roly-Poly” formed elements of what is now “Roulette”.
The card game “Faro” was once the most widely played gambling game in England. My 1950 edition of game bible “Hoyle’s Games” says it is “rarely met with in the domestic circle…..chiefly, it may be said, because the game has for long been in pretty bad odour through the large sums of money that may be lost at it and through the almost unlimited opportunities that are afforded to (and often taken by) an unscrupulous banker to “fleece the lambs”. It is a pity; because Faro, when honestly played, is one of the best of all the banking games.” “Bassett” was a variation of this.
“Hazard” was a dice game mentioned in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”, with rather complicated rules – http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_(game). Not a million miles from the League of Gentlemen’s wonderful Go Johnny Go Go Go Go:
A judge’s ruling upheld their illegality in 1935, as well as all card games that were not based on pure skill (therefore meaning all card games would technically be illegal according to this judgement, as there is always the element of chance with cards).
Some info on the ruling is here in The Spectator’s archive – http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/4th-october-1935/11/when-bridge-is-illegal
There’s no mention of the games in the latest gambling legislation, however. But they’re not on the list of games approved for play in casinos, although this is probably because they’re not played anymore anyway – http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/pdf/list%20of%20approved%20casino%20games%20%20-%20july%202008.pdf
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Smoking Racket, 1935
Looking at The Universal Book of Hobbies and Handicrafts, it feels like it would be remiss not to have a look at what it says about smoking. After all, it seems like smoking was the Universal Hobby back in the ’30s.
The chapter on “Keeping Fit” is largely in accordance with current thinking apart from pretty high expectations exercise-wise. I daresay there’s a couple of people out there these days not getting the recommended daily amount – “An hour’s hard singles [tennis] is considered by physiologists to represent the minimum amount of daily exercise for the average man.”
But when it comes to smoking, they’re not quite so strict. Smoking “may do no great harm”, although it’s better to “knock off” the fags if you’re an athlete.
Meanwhile, in The Weekend Book, they’re positively in love with tobacco. It’s a cure-all, the joys of which are detailed in a little poem that was very much removed in later editions of the book:
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Take the Blue Pill, 1938
“Titbits Book of Wrinkles” from 1938 is another one of my favourite type of book – the compendium of knowledge. “Wrinkles” in this book mean “tips” or, as in the (slightly annoying) word of the moment, “hacks”.
This is an oddity from the “Medicine” section – a recommendation to take the “Blue Pill”.
This inspired a bit of history-surfing. I found out that this blue pill was also called “blue mass” and was quite popular as a cure-all in the nineteenth century.
Abraham Lincoln liked them and they may have caused him to suffer the effects of mercury poisoning earlier in his life – http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/07/0717_lincoln.html
But doesn’t 1938 seem a bit late for recommendations to eat mercury?
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Easter Eggsplained, 1938
Ever wonder how the date for Easter is worked out? The Weekend Book from 1938 can help you out.
Simply get a degree in maths and then use the below formula to easily find out the date for any given year.
This is a game for the more robust personality. In the wrong crowd, this is not so much a way to break the ice at parties, as a way to crash into a bloody great iceberg. The kind of game they’d make everyone play in the Big Brother house if they wanted to cause murder.
In short, a vengeful god demands sacrifices and a piece of paper is passed round the group who have to mark on it who they would sacrifice first, and that person has to leave the room. This continues until there are only two people left, and this is where it gets slightly confusing. The instructions say to call out the name of the person least worthy to survive, but if there’s only two left then I’m not sure how it would work. Unless the we’re-not-worthy sacrificed in the hall outside are the ones shouting…?
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I Wish I Loved the Human Race, 1914
A little poem for a Monday morning from the “Hate Poems” chapter in The Weekend Book.
By Walter Raleigh (not that one).
A game this Friday from the 1938 Weekend Book. A game created by H G Wells, no less. And what did one of the most inventive literary minds of all time call this game? Yes, “Ball Game”. You will need a barn….
Nb. See also the cheeky water game “Kissing at the bottom of the sea”.