How many of you have played rock, paper, scissors? We played it all the time in school — sometimes just as a game, sometimes to decide who would play first in a game, and sometimes to break a tie.
I remember, a few years ago, watching an episode of the popular TV show The Big Bang Theory, where Sheldon comes up with a new version of rock, paper, scissors called ‘rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock.’ I was amused that someone could complicate such a simple game. However, this perspective changed when I attended a conference on traditional games in Spain.
One of the delegates demonstrated on stage the game of Morra. It is a more sophisticated version of rock, paper, scissors, and is played in various versions across Europe. It is a hand game, that I understand, dates back thousands of years to ancient Roman and Greek times. While there are many variations of Morra, most forms can be played with a minimum of two players. In the most popular version, the players throw out a single hand, each showing zero to five fingers, and call out their guess as to the sum of all fingers.
If one player guesses the sum, that player earns one point. The first player to reach three points wins the game.
Another unusual game was demonstrated by a team from France — barrel rolling. These were giant barrels used to store wine and the team was rolling the barrels. Now, that sounds very simple, but imagine a large barrel lightly tipped on its side. You cannot let it stop and you need to keep it rolling. Their rolling was literally a dance with split-second timing — passing barrels to one another, weaving in and out.
Yet another fascinating game that was demonstrated, involved rolling a wheel of cheese. It was about the size of a scooter tire and a rope was wound around it, then wrapped around your fingers, much like you would while spinning a top. You picked it up and yanked at the rope, letting the wheel of cheese roll across the floor. The cheese was heavy and slippery, but depending on your skill, the cheese could roll quite a good distance.
Someone told me that one of the reasons they do this is so that the cheese softens with the rolling and the heat. When the rolling is all done, they literally cut away the rind and everyone digs into the cheese, which is usually paired with a glass of wine.
Every culture has its traditions. Some games may be strange to us. Others are similar to the games we play in India. For example, almost every country demonstrated spinning tops of different kinds.
What matters is that we are united in our love for fun and play, and perhaps that matters more than anything else.