Judge — June 1937 — page 27: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

WEEKEND FUN “ ‘HE time has come,” the hostess said, “to think of many things; of shuffleboard and anagrams, and aces, queens and kings. And whether nines or treys are wild and why the ping-pong pings.” Yes, the open season on weak-willed weekenders has rolled around again. From Maine to Moose Jaw, suburban hostesses are dragging badminton sets from out of hall closets, banging cro- quet mallets on cellar floors in the fool- ish hope that the heads will stick on, tripping over wickets, pinching their fingers in folding bridge chairs, and frantically searching through scrapbooks for some sort of parlor inanity to amuse their guests, break the ice and start the Patty rolling. If there’s any slicker or quicker ice breaker-upper than a tall Peaker of scotch ou soda, we'd like to know. But while the scotch is going around, one of the best ways to start a party and get everybody talking with everybody else, is the old favorite “Who Am I?” Pin the name of some famous char- acter on the back of each guest. The guest then tries to find out what name ts on his back (who he is) by asking questions. He can ask three questions of everyone playing, such as “Am I liv- ing today?", “Am I male or female?”, “Have I got a beard?” The first person to discover his or her identity is the winner and gets an extra touch of High. land authority in his or her glass. NOTHER “Who” game for a little later on, is “Whodunnit.” Two, three or four guests leave the room, work ‘out a brief tableau of crime, put on or take off an extra article or so of clothing, come back and present their tableau to the rest of the party. The spectators to this murder, lynch- ing, robbery or whatever it was, become witnesses and are given paper and pen- cil and asked to write down what they saw and heard. Sounds simple, but wait until the pa- pers are read. You can lay odds that no two witnesses will agree on exactly what happened, and most of the accounts will conflict on an amazing number of basic facts. EFORE the paper and pencils are B put back in Bie desk drawer, a neat game for groups of two, three or four is “Letter-Go,” an invention of cartoonist C. D. Russell, who is also the inventor of Pete the Tramp. Each player rules off, free-hand, a box containing twenty- five squares. This is done by making six horizontal lines about a half inch spate and crossing them with six more half inch apart vertical lines. The players then take turns in calling out letters. Each letter, as it is called, must be placed by each player in any one of his twenty-five squares, and no erasing either. The ob- ject is to make words horizontally and vertically. When all the squares have been filled in, papers are exc! ed and scores totaled. A five letter word counts 10, a four letter word 5 and a three letter word 2. Two letter words don't count at all. Neither do proper names nor foreign words. Also, adding an “'s” on the end of a singular word to make it into a plural is just a waste of time. Your opponents will only allow you the singu- lar. A perfect score is 100—five five letter words each way. But in stiff com. petition you should be able to pick up the marbles with anything in the neigh. borhood of 70. NER yet has there been a week- end party at which someone at some time didn’t start dealing out cold poker hands “just to see how they are running.” Here's a variation that adds skill, bluff, persuasion, higher mathe- matics and gives full vent to that third oldest of all instincts—the bargaining urge. Each player antes before each hand, but there is never any betting. The first card is dealt face down and the balance up. After each round of cards, the dealer hesitates to allow any or all players to bid on one another's hands. That's all there is to it, but just try it. It’s exciting and chock-full of jubilance and regrets. RE’S one we recommend for Sun. day nights when everybody is be- ginning to hate everybody else. It’s called Russian Sledges and is a nice stupid way of using up a lot of time and clean white paper. Also, it provides plenty of good old-fashioned blood letting. Everybody writes down a list of the people present. Each player then imag- ines himself and all present racing over the steppes of Russia in the same sled, madly pursued by a pack of ravening wolves. One by one, someone must be thrown to the hungry beasts. The idea, then, is to decide whom each player would toss out first, whom next, and so forth, until all but one are thrown out. Accordingly, each player must number off the names on his list in the order he would toss them overboard. Needless to say, no one throws himself over. The lists are then collected and the numbers after each name are added up and the tson who has the smallest number after is or her name is the least popular per- son present. (It usually turns out to be the life of the party). When he or she goes home, sore, the proceedings can go on, using other lists made up of mutual acquaintances, judges, radio stars, movie actors, dramatic critics, etc. —CHARLES JACKSON. SYMBOL OF SERVICE This country’s good telephone service did not just happen. It has been made possible by the organization and development of the Bell System. BELL TELEPHONE SYSTEM comicbooks.com