Just a Stick and a Brick

Dan Aldrich's family in Michigan has been playing a backyard game for generations, but no one's sure how to spell its name.

Is it C-a-d-d-y? C-a-d-d-i-e? Or is some other variation correct?

"I've never written it down," the Lyndon Township resident says. "If you ask 10 Aldriches how to spell it, you might get 10 different spellings."

The game is played with a sawed-off broomstick and a brick.

People young and old can enjoy the game, Aldrich says.

"Everyone sits around in the grass and there's excessive heckling," he adds. "About how you swing, how silly you look with the stick." [Link]

Without His Watch Since World War I

A wristwatch lost in a World War I poker game by a soldier in France will be returned to his family today. The watch—inscribed "W.B. Gill, Sioux City, IA, U.S.A."—wound up in the possession of Carl Grothaus of Bemis, South Dakota.

How he acquired it was one of the few war stories he shared with his inquisitive boys.

"It was part of the pot in a poker game," son Dewey Grothaus said, laughing that he had never seen his father gamble or even play cards. "That part he would talk about. I don't know if he knew Gill or if he served with him."

"He did try to look the guy up" after returning from the war, Grothaus said. During a trip to sell cattle at the Sioux City Stockyards, Carl Grothaus asked around about W.B. Gill, but found nothing. The watch returned to his dresser, where it sat until he died in 1991. [Link]

He Didn't Know When to Fold 'em

If her great-great-grandfather had been a better card player, Sophie Parkin might be living in Craig-y-Nos Castle in Wales.

Today the estate is worth around £2.5m but Sophie, 45, will never see a penny of it, nor will she ever live within the castle’s grey, stone walls.

Because, according to Sophie’s grandmother, the wealthy landowner was also a bit of a gambler and it was only a matter of time before the castle slipped out of his hands.

The winner of that fateful game took pity on the poor family and allowed them to stay on in the crofter’s cottage, but private schooling had to be swapped for hard work as their life of privilege disappeared before their eyes. [Link]

[Photo credit: Craig Y Nos by The Welsh Knight]

Who Says Games Have to Be Fun?

Alvin O. Hall—the Milton Bradley of Cincinnati, Ohio—was granted a patent on Jan. 25, 1881, for a game based on the 1880 census. It was to be played on two identical maps of the United States with blocks bearing the names of 48 census subdivisions ("thirty-eight States, nine territories, and one district"), and a like number of blocks bearing the number of inhabitants in each subdivision.

Either player, for instance No. 1, turns up a block [...] so that the name of the State can be seen, and then both guess at the population in 1880, and the one that has nearest approached the true figure takes the block and places it upon the corresponding State, and if he fails the block is returned to the rest; but if he guessed correctly the block remains on his map until all the blocks have been placed on the map, the player having the most blocks on his map being the winner.

It is not known whether this game was actually inflicted upon the American public.

Playing Cards Can Lead to Reproduction

Here's another reason to buy Fyodor Soloview's Six Generations card game: it could save your family from extinction.

The governments of European nations have been worried about progressive declines in populations, which will face them with serious shortage of labor. Nobody had an answer before as to how to secure an average fertility rate of over 2.1 babies per woman, which required human reproduction.

To fix this dilemma, Soloview said, governments, schools and parents should educate children in family genealogy. At home, children must observe the family tree with several generations of their ancestors. To help the parents, Fyodor Soloview, a father of four children, designed the family history card game Six Generations, which looks like a deck of playing cards.

"You just let you children play Six Generations, and they will figure it out by themselves, what their own role in securing their family dynasty is," the inventor said. [Link]

One-Eyed Mothers-in-Law are Wild

From PRNewsWire:

New Playing Cards 'Six Generations' Are Invented Unexpectedly

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- The monarchic structure of standard playing cards with King, Queen and Jack is now breaking apart by an Alaskan game designer who invented a new "democratic" deck with a 64-person family in six generations.

When Ted Soloview, a graphic designer from Alaska was searching his genealogy with the roots of Russian, German, and Ukrainian ancestors, he caught an idea that anybody's triangle-looking family tree could be used to create a new card game.

After a year of research and choosing a universal match for parents and children, husbands and wives, lifestyle and clothing, names and countries for the European family of immigrants to America, his idea has generated an innovative card game, "Six Generations."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

These cards may also be used to play "Strip Genealogy," though this is not advised. Six Generations is available at Amazon.com.