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Contents:
This
game home page
About
this game (international)
How
to make and play (with links)
Beryl's
games
Others'
games
Beryl
home page
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All the British
people I've talked to played this kind of folded
paper game as children, but no-one could remember
its name. 'The game with no name' seems to exist in
many countries under different names:
Some
international variations:
The
Fortune-Teller version
(see 'how
to' page)
Russia: "Gadalotschka" - refers to fortune
telling (& possibly 'frogs'?)
Norway: "Spå" (pronounced 'spoor') or
"Spålapp", which means something like
"fortune telling piece of paper".
France: "Cocotte en papier" (cocotte is
slang for a hen).
"Cootie
Catcher"
In North America these games are called
either fortune-tellers or cootie
catchers. They mostly follow the fortune-teller
pattern, but cooties are (in the dictionary)
head-lice, possibly from the Malaysian word kutu.
They are more generally an invisible infectious
disease which children say other children have, and
hence have to be run away from (like the British
'Dreaded Lurgy"). Girls, it seems, were thought to
be particular carriers of 'cooties'. I've found a
net site with a version of the game with
cooties
inside. I'd
like to know more!
Heaven and
Hell
The inside 'mouth' was drawn on to make a
picture of 'heaven' when opened one way, 'hell'
when opened the other. Common in Austria,
Germany, andSlovakia (there called
"Nebo Peklo").
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Moscow
Banff,
Sunderland, and Norway.
Seattle
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