Hopscotch is a children's
game that can be played with several players or alone.
Hopscotch is a popular playground game in which players toss a small object into
numbered spaces of a pattern of rectangles outlined on the ground and then hop
or jump through the spaces to retrieve the object.
There are apocryphal stories of
hopscotch being invented by Romans or Chinese, but the first recorded
references to the game in English date back to the late 17th century, usually
under the name 'scotch-hop' or 'scotch-hopper(s)'. A manuscript Book
of Games compiled between 1635 and 1672 by Francis Willughby refers to
'Scotch Hopper‥. They play with a piece of tile or
a little flat piece of lead, upon a boarded floore, or anie area divided into
oblong figures like boards'. In Poor Robin’s
Almanack for 1677, the game is referred to as
"Scotch-hoppers." The entry states, "The time when schoolboys
should play at Scotch-hoppers." The 1707 edition of Poor Robin’s Almanack
includes the following phrase… "Lawyers and Physicians have little to do
this month, so they may (if they will) play at Scotch-hoppers." In
1828 Webster's An American Dictionary of the
English language also referred to the game as 'Scotch-hopper'...'a play in
which boys hop over scotches and lines in the ground.
There are many other forms of
hopscotch played across the globe. In India it is called
Stapu or Kith-Kith, in Spain it's Rayuela. In Latin America, golosa.
In Russian it is known
as классики (diminutive for the word meaning classes). In Poland, it is
called klasy, meaning classes. In Italy it is
called campana (meaning bell), or mondo (meaning world).
In the Netherlands and Flanders, Hinkelen.
In Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia it
is called školica, meaning little school. In Malaysia the
most popular variant is called tengteng. In Mexico, it is
called bebeleche (mamaleche) meaning drink
milk or avioncito meaning little plane ("probably
because of the shape"). In Puerto Rico it is called "peregrina"
(meaning "pilgrim"- female noun). In Romania the
game is called șotron and is widely played by children all over the
country. In Brazil it
is called amarelinha. The name evolved from marelle, the French name
for the game, but was identified to the radical amarelo (yellow) and
its diminutive in -inho/a. In Breton,
the name is reg or delech. The Albanian variant is
called rrasavi, which is composed of two words: rrasa ("the
flat stone", an object used to play the game)
and vi ("line", a reference to the lines that comprise the
diagram of the course). In Philippines, hopscotch is called "piko"
(pee-ko).
The game's generic name in Persian
is Laylay. The most common form of Laylay in Iran resembles the older Western
types and uses six or more (always an even number) side-by-side squares
successively (vertically) numbered. The player uses a peg or a flat stone that
the player must kick to the next square as the player is hopping. If either the
stone or a player's foot lands on a line, the player forfeits the game (or
loses a turn). Although somewhat less common, the contemporary Western type is
also played.
A French variant of hopscotch is
known as escargot (snail) or marelle ronde (round
hopscotch). It is played on a spiral course. Players must hop on one foot to
the center of the spiral and back out again. A player marks one square with his
or her initials, and from then on may place two feet in that square, while all
other players must hop over it. The game ends when all squares are marked or no
one can reach the center, and the winner is the player who "owns" the
most squares.
In Germany, Austria,
and Switzerland the
game is called Himmel und Hölle (Heaven and Hell) although there are
also some other names used, depending on the region. The square
below 1 or the 1 itself are called Erde (Earth)
while the second to last square is the Hölle (Hell) and the last one
is Himmel (Heaven). The first player throws a small stone into the first
square and then jumps to the square and must kick the stone to the next square
and so on, however, the stone or the player cannot stop in Hell so
they try to skip that square.
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