In the Collectable/Collectible thread of Wordplay & Fun, the discussion turned to marbles. I was just having a conversation with someone who grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and he insists that marbles are played nothing like what of troy described... Marbles to UPers are apparently a small-scale version of golf. A "pot" is hollowed out in the middle of the playing field, and some sort of complex scoring system ensues that I'm not exactly clear on. Since I was not a marble-player as a child, I'm not fully apprised on the differences.

BUT... I am aware of a definite regional difference in The Way Things Are Done. In the "Extended Dance Mix" (if you will) of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer... you know, where extra words are added into the lyrics, i.e.:
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Reindeer)
Had a very shiny nose (Like a light bulb)
And if you ever saw it (Saw it)
You would even say it glows (Like a light bulb)
All of the other reindeer (Reindeer)
Used to laugh and call him names (Like Dumbo)
They never let poor Rudolph (Rudolph)
Join in any reindeer games (Like football)
Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say (Ho, ho, ho)
"Rudolph with your nose so bright,
Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"
Then all the reindeer loved him (Loved him)
And they shouted out with glee (Yippee!)
"Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Reindeer)
You'll go down in history!" (Like Lincoln)
There appear to be definite regional distinctions in the way the "expanded lyrics" are defined.

Last but not least, as a child I played a game called "Duck, Duck, Goose" in which one person walked around a circle of seated players, tapping each one on the head in passing and assigning them the identity of "Duck" or "Goose". If you were a duck, no problem. If you were the goose, however, you had to scramble up and tag the person who tapped you before they were able to run around the circle and assume your spot. Well, apparently in Minnesota, the recognized convention is "Duck, Duck, Grey Duck". Why? Don't ask me, I just live here.

Last but not least, as a child I played a game called "Duck, Duck, Goose" in which one person walked around a circle of seated players, tapping each one on the head in passing and assigning

While my first acquaintance with said game came through watching a US sitcom at around 30 years of age - go figga!

"Duck, Duck, Grey Duck"

At the risk of showing my strong partisan feelings on this matter (Grey Duck indeed), it seems that the Minnesotan version would lend itself to kids simply mumbling the "Grey" and making a run for it, leaving the hapless grey duck unaware what has transpired.

Perhaps this shows the rough-and-tumble, duck-eat-duck world I grew up in, but I think the non-Minnesotan version (which I assume is how it's played everywhere else in the world) results in sounds that are easily distinguishable, and thus less prone to such fowl play.

What? No one really cares about this? Hmmm. Never mind.

I played Duck, Duck, Goose as a little kid. [shrug]



We sometimes have sung the lyrics as follows:

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer (reindeer)
Had a very shiny nose (like a light bulb!)
And if you ever saw it (saw it)
You would even say it glows (like a flashlight!) or (like a light bulb!)
All of the other reindeer (reindeer)
Used to laugh and call him names (like Pinocchio!)
They never let poor Rudolph (Rudolph)
Join in any reindeer games (like Monopoly!)

Then one foggy Christmans Eve, Santa came to say, ( in a deep voice - Ho ho ho!)
"Rudolph, with your nose so bright,
Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"

Then all the reindeer loved him, (loved him)
And they shouted out with glee, (Whoopee!)
"Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, (reindeer)
You'll go down in history!" (like George Washington!) or (like Charlie Brown!)

...the rough-and-tumble, duck-eat-duck world I grew up in.

Donald would never do such a thing!

Hey, look, everybody!! I'm a newbie, not a stranger!!

Hey, look, everybody!! I'm a newbie, not a stranger!!

Congratulations! Now, get quacking, and move on up to journeyman! I am obliged to wan you though, that you simply must be prepared to lose however many marbles you have along the way, until you reach the sorry state of our one veteran, who thinks s/he's four people - jmh,tsuwm, Jackie and Anu. In reality the veteran is just a little old guy who shares a small tin shack with a cat he calls The Lord.

You'll go down in history!" (like George Washington!) or (like Charlie Brown!)

We follow pretty much the same text for our little asides, but for some reason, we finish up with "like Jesse James!" (Cowboy bad-guy, gunslinger type, for them what's not familiar with US'n folklore)

>>You'll go down in history!" (like George Washington!) or (like Charlie Brown!)

>We follow pretty much the same text for our little asides, but for some reason, we finish up with "like Jesse James!" (Cowboy bad-guy, gunslinger type, for them what's not familiar with US'n folklore)

...and at my daughters' school, they always sing "(like Columbus)", which seems to fit much better to the beat of the music, to my ear anyway (cf the syllables and emphasis in "like a light bulb"). Interesting that they haven't come up with a variation more relevant to Oz.

Remind me again- how many posts do I need to be a journeyman?

OK, so there's only one veteran, and s/he is really 4 separate people, one of whom is Anu? I am surprised that Anu would have time to do so much posting, given the number of posts I've seen by these people.

Marbles - Each person had a large marble (your "shooter") and a bunch of target marbles (all worth a variety of different scoring systems). Played in dirt (so the marbles wouldn't roll so far) a ring was drawn into the dirt (about a yard in diameter), and the targets (provided as the "bet") were dropped randomly into the middle. The first player, who was chosen by the "eenie meenie" system, would have first "crack" (the sound of two marbles hitting each other)at knocking them out of the ring. One shot per turn, keep the marbles you knock out(or the points), and take turns (more than two can play) till you've lost "your" marbles.

Reindeer - I got nothin'.

I'm with you all the way "Duck - Duck - Goose"

Is that where we get the expression "take a crack at it"?

our one veteran, who thinks s/he's four people - jmh,tsuwm, Jackie and Anu
I am surprised that Anu would have time to do so much posting, given the number of posts I've seen by these people.

Hey--are you people saying I'm a four-poster?

Congrats, français & musick, on your graduations.

...and at my daughters' school, they always sing "(like Columbus)"

I've only heard this at the school that one of my daughters is currently attending, so I only heard it about two years ago and I'm not sure how long it has been around.

The current ending (sung with more than a hint of sarcasm) is like the Spice Girls

>Hey--are you people saying I'm a four-poster?

If you are then I'm a bedpost.

PS Managed to avoid becoming a vet, so far!

What, Jo? not even a du-vet?
Perhaps you prefer blanket coverage of the board?
Or do you keep posting to bolster your confidence? (or to score more points towards veteran-hood)?
Over 1100 post is very creditable, considering you started with a clean sheet!
I suppose the friendship engendered by this board is a help - we are a set of very pally asses.

Marbles: can't help you; never played, although I am aware that various games can be played. I am surprised that the Yooper version doesn't involve beer, though.

Duck, duck: I've only heard it as Duck, duck, goose.

Rudolph: I've never heard the supplemental lyrics version of the song. Around here, kids sing the alternate cowboy version:

Irving the shiny-gunned cowboy
Had a very shiny gun
And if you ever saw it,
You would turn around and run.

All of the other cowboys
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Irving
Join in any poker games.

Then one foggy Christmas Eve,
The sheriff came to say,
Irving with your gun so bright
Won't you kill my wife tonight?

Then all the cowboys loved him,
And they shouted out with glee,
Irving, the shiny-gunned cowboy,
You'll go down in history.

Marbles
Musick, you've described marbles the way I used to play it back in prehistoric times. Now, are you old enough to remember mumbledy-peg?

I've finally gotten a chance to modify my original post to include the full Oregon version of the extended Rudolph lyrics...

'Round here Santa doesn't "ho,ho,ho" in that song (I hate it I hate it I hate it) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. No, around here, Santa is "In his underware!"

Now I'm not old enough, I might be later, however, Dad told me about it. Tell us the rules, and we'll get a team together! (..."another crack like that and I oughta"...)

My guess starts crack in a quarry(hit me tsuwm). Ya load 16 tons, an wha da ya get...a bag o' aggies!

Speaking of fowl, why is it called "getting goosed"? The angle of attack, perhaps?

...it looks like it's gonna rain, dear!

Santa is "In his underware!"

Always wondered how he keeps his floppy drive warm.

Mumbledy-peg was not a marbles game. It was a game played exclusively by boys, using their pocket knives. Basically, you had to perform, in sequence, a series of manouvres or tricks, of increasing difficulty, with your knife in the grass (not in the dirt, since that tended to dull the blade). Girls, of course, did not have knives. This brings up the astonishing fact, which I learned from a newspaper article recently, that marbles is still a very popular pastime in some parts (rural) of the US and there are large tournaments and -- blasphemous thought -- GIRLS TAKE PART. That was unthinkaable in my youth. The sexes each had their own activities, like jumping rope for girls, marbles & mumbledy-peg for boys, and taking part in the others' games would have been like cross-dressing.

I agree completely, byb. I was amused to find this in OED:

mumble-the-peg {I guess we must have mumbled this}
Now U.S.

A boys' game in which each player in turn throws a knife from a series of positions, continuing until he fails to make the blade stick in the ground. Hence mumblety-pegging vbl. n.
The unsuccessful player is compelled to draw out of the ground with his teeth a peg which the others have driven in with a certain number of blows with the handle of the knife. In Antrim the game is said to have been played with a fork instead of a knife (see E.D.D.). In Scotland it is locally called ‘knifie’.

The sexes each had their own activities, like jumping rope for girls, marbles & mumbledy-peg for boys, and taking part in the others' games would have been like cross-dressing.

B'more must have been even more Puritanical than New England. I played marbles and beat the boys at the game with an acceptable degree of success in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
wow

I played marbles in northern Alberta. But that was in the early '80s. So maybe not as shocking.

Girls could and did play marbles and skulley-- but these were boys games ( jump rope and jacks were girls sport)

by HS--soft ball as co-ed but baseball (hardball) was male-- Touch football the boys liked to be co-ed-- they like the touch part.
mumbley peg was definate still a boys game in the 50's and 60's-- I started carrying a knife at age 13-- i wasn't a tough kid-- but i found it usefull (i still carry a "swiss army" type knife) but would never think to play mumbley peg.

Everyone played ringalevio, nowdays most kids have never even heard of it!

Last month NYTimes reported on world championship Double Dutch contest (held in Harlem) winner were a co-ed team from Japan- most US teams are still all female.

Maybe the most popular game, mostly for boys but occasionally a girl might be admitted, was stickball, which has many variations. The urban (New York) variation is for narrow streets with row houses right up to the sidewalk, played usually with a rubber ball and a broomstick. My father, my 2 brothers, and my 2 sisters and I played it with a baseball bat and a ball made up of tightly-rolled-up worn out old sweatsocks in the side yard. It got really challenging (especially for my mother) when the mulberry tree which hung over the infield was dropping ripe fruits.

Stick ball-- as i know it was always played with a stick-- the handle of a mop or broom (handle where sold seperately from mop head or broom heads)
and we played a variation of kick the can.
Before cans had "refunds" (only bottles did) you could crush the can (steel, not todays aluminum) and flatten it.
The game was played in an intersection with two storm drains (sewers) at diagonal corners-- (we had one intersection in the area that had 4 storm drains-- one on each corner- and played a four team or doubles)

the game is similar to soccar-- only every time you score a goal you lost your can--

To form the can right, you needed a can that had both lids intact--so a soda or beer can that had been punctured --with a church key-- was fine, but a can that had the top lid cut off by a can opener wasn't.

we also played "jonny on the pony" and many varieties of hand ball-- all with spaldeens--little pink hand balls from the Spalding NY Ball company. spaldeen is a NY corruption, from the Irish--where een is used as a diminutive ie, Maureen (for Maura) Peggeen (for Peggy or Margaret). The Spalding company made many balls, but little balls where spaldeens. Eens shows up in some other irish words (smithereens-- little pieces) "smashed to smithereens!"

Colleen, now a common girls name, was once a pet name, like pumkin, or peaches, or sugar plum-- but it was "little lump of coal" . Coal (if you don't have to mine it, or shovel it into a boiler) is really quite beautiful-- all black and shiny. (and as imported sourse of fuel, expensive!) and it is used as an adjective. a little girl, with shiny dark hair or eyes might be compared favorable to a lump of coal and called a coleen. As time passed, it just became complimentary, latter as just a way to describe a pretty girl (a colleen) and finally, began to be used as a name--
My mother used to gag every time she heard it used as a name-- and went crazy that priest would accept it as a name-- since they had rejected my mother choice of Deirdre-- as a pagan name, and not one to be used for a baptism!

>apparently in Minnesota, the recognized convention is "Duck, Duck, Grey Duck"

I suspect this is out of respect for their neighbors to the SE. The Michiganders (and the Michigeese).

The term "Michiganders" was coined by Ohioans as a pejorative term, apparently around the time that Michigan and Ohio had a border war. My memory of high school history class is hazy, but I recall that the single battle was fought in a farm field, resulting in casualties of a couple of geese and some cabbage heads. The dispute was settled, with Ohio getting the strip of land, including Toledo, and Michigan getting the entire upper peninsula. Despite the term "Michiganders," it seems it was the Ohioans who got plucked.

Natives of Michigan are now variously called Michiganians and Michiganders. Neither term bothers.

The dispute was settled, with Ohio getting the strip of land, including Toledo, and Michigan getting the entire upper peninsula. Despite the term "Michiganders," it seems it was the Ohioans who got plucked.

I find it hard to believe that Ohio was fighting over the upper penninsula, we like all of our state to be in one piece, a nice heart-shaped piece.

And when exactly was this battle, if it was even a real fighting battle? I've heard of it, but I've never seen any maps that show a difference in the borders.

The fight was over the border between Michigan and Ohio -- with Michigan wanting it a bit south, and Ohio a bit north, and Ohio winning as to the ultimate location of the line, which meant that Toledo ended up in Ohio. The UP came into play only as a settlement device: the arbiters (the feds, I'm guessing) offered Michigan a chunk of the northwest territory to compensate for the loss of Toledo, etc. At the time, they thought the UP to be useless wilderness. The copper and iron deposits were only discovered later, and of course timber became a big UP industry as well. Not to mention pasties ...

There was a battle, in a farm field, with the cabbage and poultry casualties I mentioned. I can't remember any more, but I'll bet both Ohio and Michigan's state libraries have info.

I never hear the controversy mentioned anymore, but "Michiganders" lives on.

And only slightly related: Jeff Daniels' movie Escanaba in Da Moonlight opened in Michigan last weekend, and did well. If a national distributor picks it up, do try to catch it. Crude, but funny, and a nice sampling of Yooper language. (In a review last week, a transplanted Yooper explained that she'd married a troll 20 years ago, and her family hadn't quite forgiven her yet.)

Ohio winning as to the ultimate location of the line, which meant that Toledo ended up in Ohio

Well, people in Toledo act like they're in Detroit, so I guess it's all the same.

My dad used to tell a joke about some Russian named Rudolph the Red. He was very good at predicting weather. I think the joke involved some kid asking his mom how Rudolph knew it was going to rain. Her reply, of course, was, "Because Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear."

Tsuwm - How complete the circle has become! We called that knife game "Chicken" because the positions the knife were to be thrown into revolved around your opponents foot. Moving the foot resulted in a punch in the upper arm (unless you could run fast).

BYB - I would imagine neither Tswum nor you are big fans of Xena - the princess warrior

[slightly confused emoticon] How does Xena, bimbo warrior, come into all of this?

francais-pi(can I call you that)- BYB's answer to the rules to mumbledy-peg ended with the word "cross-dressing" as a comment towards crossing certain traditional "roles" - to which I had to add the description "warrior princess" (she does wear a skirt, however...).

I never did get the 'splaynin' about gettin' "goosed", now who's the chicken . My marbles were played (not completely out) in the mid 60's w/girls and there was no "problem" conceived or perceived...(yet)...(er.., I'll shut up now...)

francais-pi(can I call you that)-
Sure. I also answer to francais.

Thanks for clearing that up.

francais-pi(can I call you that)

Let's see: français (silk) pie, "pican" pie--
we sure seem to be getting a lot of pies around here.
Blueberry calling Lemon...

So we have to call "pi" what was previously named by the greek letter.
Anyway, to a mathematician 4 digits - as 1415 - for pi are no more satisfying than 1.000.000, since pi is not rational - there is no possibility of writing it in a decimal form repeating again and again the same string of digits ,
as, for example , in
7,1232412341234...
Ciao
Emanuela

I'll stick to any kind of pi(e) that hits me in the face, or is it vice-versa ... Blueberry seems to be chock-full anti-oxidants, and it reminds me of picking wild "ones" up in the mountains of Norway with the reindeer by my side. Lemon, whether it be dancing the "merengue", or topped with a thin layer of Mandarin Napoleon is right up there... but my current favorite is "banana oil", especially with all this cajolery going on.

But, please, let us not talk about food...YART.... and another thing, the pi issue is here in YART again.... not that I expect to change the subject back to goosing, completely, however... - Ciao

Just a reminder : AnaStrophic had a great idea when she started a thread called Recipes and other non-language topics ... right in this category.
Just a reminder
wow

Forgive my ignorance - dare I ask - what is YART?

In regards to your comment about using 1.000.000 digits -

As a child I learned to use commas for large numbers (1,000,000) - now I am seeing periods (1.000.000) and spaces (1 000 000) used, especially in science-related or foreign uses. Any explanations??

what is YART?

IITYWYBMAD?

In French immersion we learned commas where an anglo would use decimals. So $2.00 would be 2,00 $ written in French, at least the way I learned it. Also in Italian the same reversal of symbols applies, so one million is 1.000.000 as Emanuela wrote. (I don't think this is new, it has always been around, but the increasing overlap of different cultures makes it more noticeable.) It's probably used more often there because the lira comes in "giant" denominations like that. A million lire isn't really as much as it sounds like - something like $717 Canadian or $469 US.

As for scientific publications, I have noticed an increased use of spaces instead of commas: two thousand three hundred and thirty eight would be 2 338, not 2,338. But that may be just a preference of certain publishers, and maybe since switching into oceanography I am reading more papers by those publishers...hard to say.

I sometimes think I spend half my life swapping round commas and points in numbers. Indonesian, presumably following Dutch usage, also has 3,141 (for three point (in Indonesian koma ) one four one) and 3.141 (for three thousand one hundred and forty-one).

Bingley

Thanks for the explanations.