A
children's game played by a group sitting in a circle, facing inward. A single person stands outside and walks around the circle, touching the head of each
person as they walk by and saying, "
Duck". Sometimes, whenever he feels like it, the person walking around will touch a head and yell, "
GOOSE!", at which point the
goose gets up and runs around the circle after the toucher. The
toucher attempts to completely run around the circle and sit in the goose's place. If he
succeeds, the goose is now the toucher, and must walk around the same way. If the toucher is caught by the goose, the toucher sits in the middle of the
circle. If another toucher is caught, the
original does not leave the circle, making this a
zero sum game.
Games at the start usually look like this (Were you in a plane that has the capability for aerial photographs, as well as to turn them into bad ASCII art):
d d T ----------------------
d d | T = Toucher |
d d | d = Duck |
G d | G = Goose |
d d | f = Former toucher |
----------------------
In the middle of a game, from this same
plane, it would look like this:
d d T
d f d
d f G
d d
At the end of the game, the last duck and the last goose are the
winners.
There seems to be very little point to the game, other than to have little kids run around a lot, and to remind them that they cannot always be the center of attention. Still, it is an enjoyable way to spend a half-hour with some 2nd graders.
Metacognizant informs me that when she used to play it, the person in the middle would go back to the outer circle when someone else came to the middle. This made sure that "no one would sit in the middle of the circle for too long, but there was no way for anyone to win either."
Angela informs me that, "when I played this, the middle was called 'the pickle jar'".