Dec. 29th, 2004 08:53 am
Fun for little tossers
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muckefuckOne of the things my sister asked for for her sons this year was board games. The oldest is three-and-a-half, which seems to be just about the age that he can start grokking rules of play. My older brother found a used copy of the children's classic Candyland at a rummage sale; I considered picking up Chutes and Ladders (Snakes and Ladders to you twee Brits), but didn't get around to it.
On St. Stephen's Day ("the day after Christmas" to you pagan babies), I went out for bubble tea with my parents and my stepmom made the mistake of mentioning that there was a Korean grocery nearby. I dragged them in and spent nearly and hour showing them everything from wrong candy to aloe soda. Right at the entrance was a stack of yut games. (Since playing it is a traditional Korean New Year's pastime, I assume they were aimed at customers who celebrate according to the Western calendar.)
Years ago, I made a yut game of my own with a piece of typing paper and popsicle sticks, but I never found anyone to play it with. These were the first games I'd seen for sale commercially and they contained the rustic sticks that I was trying to mimic on the cheap and easy. (That's about all they contained, besides a paper mat and eight plastic counters.) You see, yut is a straightforward racing game, but players don't roll dice. Instead, they use hardwood sticks with one flat side that were originally developed to cast the Yijing (another traditional New Year's pastime).
AWI (or perhaps I should start typing "BBD" so e. isn't always reminded of the Average Wage Index) is at a stage where throwing things around is Fun. It occurred to me that a game where tossing is an integral part--but actually keeping track of where and how the thrown objects is important--might be just what he needs. (My sister had the same thought, so she's in the market for some monkey-tossing game that was discontinued years ago. If you know of a set for sale, please comment!)
Mixed results. On the plus side, he liked the game more than his mac 'n' cheese and grasped that he had to count the flat sides in order to do something with his guys. But he was vague on just what he got to do with them. At first, he started putting one on for each flat side instead of moving that many spaces forward. Then he began making moves that seemed to have nothing to do with anything, such as pushing all the markers to the middle of the mat. Oh well; I'll send his father a copy of the rules and see if he can make any progress in my absence.
Note: There's an illustration of a set quite similar to the one I bought that I unfortunately can't reproduce here. The thick red letters on the box say yuch. (Final ch in Korean is pronounced "t".) The sticks are identical (obviously, the flat sides are all facing down), but the counters in BBD's set are round and the mat is different. The circles on it are marked with Korean toponyms. (Dad had the same thought I did: South Korean or pan-Korean? I didn't examine them long enough to tell, though I think I did see Taybaksan, which is to the Koreans what Mt. Fuji is to the Japanese.)
Addendum: From this page on Korean traditional culture: "Watch the boys when they are losing (especially to girls) They are holding four child-sized weapons and frustration can get the better of them." Ah, the dangerous toy tradition continues!
On St. Stephen's Day ("the day after Christmas" to you pagan babies), I went out for bubble tea with my parents and my stepmom made the mistake of mentioning that there was a Korean grocery nearby. I dragged them in and spent nearly and hour showing them everything from wrong candy to aloe soda. Right at the entrance was a stack of yut games. (Since playing it is a traditional Korean New Year's pastime, I assume they were aimed at customers who celebrate according to the Western calendar.)
Years ago, I made a yut game of my own with a piece of typing paper and popsicle sticks, but I never found anyone to play it with. These were the first games I'd seen for sale commercially and they contained the rustic sticks that I was trying to mimic on the cheap and easy. (That's about all they contained, besides a paper mat and eight plastic counters.) You see, yut is a straightforward racing game, but players don't roll dice. Instead, they use hardwood sticks with one flat side that were originally developed to cast the Yijing (another traditional New Year's pastime).
AWI (or perhaps I should start typing "BBD" so e. isn't always reminded of the Average Wage Index) is at a stage where throwing things around is Fun. It occurred to me that a game where tossing is an integral part--but actually keeping track of where and how the thrown objects is important--might be just what he needs. (My sister had the same thought, so she's in the market for some monkey-tossing game that was discontinued years ago. If you know of a set for sale, please comment!)
Mixed results. On the plus side, he liked the game more than his mac 'n' cheese and grasped that he had to count the flat sides in order to do something with his guys. But he was vague on just what he got to do with them. At first, he started putting one on for each flat side instead of moving that many spaces forward. Then he began making moves that seemed to have nothing to do with anything, such as pushing all the markers to the middle of the mat. Oh well; I'll send his father a copy of the rules and see if he can make any progress in my absence.
Note: There's an illustration of a set quite similar to the one I bought that I unfortunately can't reproduce here. The thick red letters on the box say yuch. (Final ch in Korean is pronounced "t".) The sticks are identical (obviously, the flat sides are all facing down), but the counters in BBD's set are round and the mat is different. The circles on it are marked with Korean toponyms. (Dad had the same thought I did: South Korean or pan-Korean? I didn't examine them long enough to tell, though I think I did see Taybaksan, which is to the Koreans what Mt. Fuji is to the Japanese.)
Addendum: From this page on Korean traditional culture: "Watch the boys when they are losing (especially to girls) They are holding four child-sized weapons and frustration can get the better of them." Ah, the dangerous toy tradition continues!
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Is the Korean Yijing very similar to what we call the Chinese I Ching?
I think Morgan was about four when we started him on playing "Sorry!" ... which was a little ahead of his level, but Chutes and Ladders really bored us to tears. And in fact he seemed to have an easier time moving pieces always in the same clockwise direction around the board than the boustrophedon motion of Chutes and Ladders.
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At least one source I have (Culin's Korean Games) considers yut the ancestor of pachīsī. All racing board games are essentially the same--you move counters around a board based on numbers generated by some randomising method--but these two do seem closer than most. I wonder if the connexion might be through the Mongols, though, since I vaguely recall a Mongol board game similar to yut.
The origins of yut are obscure (and buried in national mythologising), but it is interesting to note that the names for four of the five die results in yut--to, kay, kel, and yut itself--have essentially no meaning in Korean. Many webpages try to claim that these derive from the names of domestic animals, but my scholarly sources don't agree. This at least raises the likelihood that they were borrowed along with the game. (The fifth term, mo means "corner"; a roll of five on a new counter will land it on the first "corner" of the board.)
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