Play phrases you used as a kid

[Rum]

Anyone ever play Kingo (or "King Ball")? It was predictably banned in school after some years.

One person is on it and they have a tennis ball. They have to hit one of the other players with the ball. I think the person then joined their team and the winner was the last one left.

This is serious anthropology! We had that game and called it King. This was in my school in Hong Kong of all places!

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Anyone ever play Kingo (or "King Ball")? It was predictably banned in school after some years.

One person is on it and they have a tennis ball. They have to hit one of the other players with the ball. I think the person then joined their team and the winner was the last one left.

This is serious anthropology! We had that game and called it King. This was in my school in Hong Kong of all places!

We had a similar game - called "Sillybuggers!"

Everyone ran across a stretch of wall and one person threw a tennis ball at them. If you got hit, you were out. Last man got to throw the ball next game. Mr Wass, French teacher, saw us playing one day and said, "What are you boys doing? Playing Silly Buggers?" That's how it got its name.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

When I moved ot N Wales from Manchester (at age 10) I was introduced to a version of Hide & Seek called Blocky that was fantastic. Basically the base where the person who did the counting was was the base and after everyone had hid when the seeker started to look for people you could run back to the base, touch it, shout "Blocky El" and you were free from being "it" / the seeker for the next game.. it was so much fun - we had a old primary school in Wales that had a maze of places to hide. i can recall many times running at full speed to beat the seeker back to the base...

That was a fun game.. sometimes i think back and think I'd love to play something like that again...

I loved school.. those days were the best

Sounds nearly identical to a game when I was young called "Forty-Forty". The person who was seeker (I can't recall if there was a specific term for this person) would stand at the 'base' (normally the lamppost outside next-door's house) and cover their eyes while they counted to 40, while everybody else hid. They would then seek-out the hidden people, and if they saw them they would have to rush back to the base, touch it, and yell "Forty-forty, see you <person's name>!". In the meantime the hidden people would be trying to get back to base, whereupon they would shout "Forty-forty, save myself!".

The first person 'seen' would be seeking the next time, unless everyone 'saves' themselves, in which case the last person goes again. It could sometimes get a bit acrimonious when a seeker was accused of 'base-hanging' (staying near the base just waiting for people to reveal themselves, rather than going off to search).

I have no idea of the etymology of the term 'forty-forty', beyond the counting to 40 seconds bit (which I'm fairly sure came about as a result of the game's name, not vice versa).


Postscript - Having typed all that, I now find Forty-Forty has it's own wikipedia article.