Jacks is a playground game for children.

The game originated hundreds of years ago, when the only playthings boys and girls had were materials they found near their homes. They collected small stones and animal bones and learned to use them in a game. They tossed them into the air in a way similar to today's version of the game

Game

A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...

. An older version of the game used five stone cubes made of clay, wood, ivory, bone, plastic, or other substances. The game is usually played with two people. The game originated in Ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt.

Pieces

Traditionally, jacks are metal objects bearing six tips at right angles to one another, four of which are usually rounded, with two opposite tips more pointed. This ensures the jack is relatively easy to pick up. Also required is a small rubber ball, used as a sort of timing device: the jacks are manipulated in the time it takes the ball to bounce up in the air and return to the height of the hand that catches it.

Play

The players decide who goes first, usually through "flipping" (when the set of jacks is placed in cupped hands, flipped to the back of the hands, and then back to cupped hands again; the player who keeps the most from falling in his/her turn, goes first); or perhaps via ip dip

Ip dip

Ip dip is a rhythmic rhyming game with many variations, the purpose of which is to select an individual from a group, for instance to choose the starting player of a game...

, (or Eeny, meeny, miny, moe

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe

"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe", which can be spelled a number of ways, is a children's counting rhyme, used to select a person to be "it" for games and similar purposes such as counting out a child that has to be stood down from a group of children as part of a playground game...

), or a variant. Then the jacks are scattered loosely into the play area. The players take it in turn to bounce the ball off the ground, then pick up jacks, and then catch the ball before it bounces for a second time.
The number of jacks to be picked up is pre-ordained and sequential: at first you must pick up one ("onesies"), next two ("twosies"), and so on. Depending on the total number of jacks included, the number may not divide evenly and there may be jacks left over. If the player chooses to pick up the leftover jacks first, one variation is to announce this by saying "horse before carriage" or "queens before kings." The playing area should be decided between the players since there is no official game rule about that.

Winning

The winning player is the one to pick up the largest number of jacks. If playing with fifteen, that goal is rarely, if ever, achieved. If ten jacks are used, the person who gets to the highest game wins. Game 1 is usually single bounce (onesies through tensies); game 2 is chosen by whoever "graduates" to game 2 first, and so on. Some game variations are "double bounces," "pigs in the pen," "over the fence," "eggs in the basket" (or "cherries in the basket,") "flying Dutchman," "around the world," etc. Some games, such as "Jack be nimble," are short games which are not played in the onesies to tensies format.

Variations

A variation of this game known as "gobs" was played in Cork, Ireland

Cork (city)

Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...

 in the 1950s using five pebbles (often quartz

Quartz

Quartz is the second-most-abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, after feldspar. It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2. There are many different varieties of quartz,...

) found on the beach.

Another variation played in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 uses five knucklebones from a lamb shank or colored plastic objects that resemble lamb knucklebones. The player tosses the five jacks in the air catching as many as possible on the back of the hand then tosses the jacks on the back of the hand, turns the hand over and catches as many as possible in the palm. The player then puts down all but one jack which he or she has caught and tosses the last jack in the air and attempts to pick up each of the remaining jacks that are lying on the ground before catching the tossed jack in the same hand. In the first round the jacks are picked up one at a time, in the second two at a time etc. Variations include swapping hands, playing with one's eyes closed, clapping quickly before picking up the jack, "catching flies" where the jack that is tossed in air is caught overhand after the one on the ground has been picked up and playing with a second set of jacks placed between the fingers - first one, then two etc.

Another variation played by Israeli

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 school-age boys is known as "kugelach." Instead of jacks and a rubber ball, five dice

Dice

A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...

-sized metal cubes are used. The game cube is tossed in the air rather than bounced. This is also known in Hebrew as "Chamesh Avanim" (חמש אבנים), or "five rocks".

In the North East of England the game with five cubes (wooden rather than metal) is called 'chucks'. A similar game to the above used to be played in the Midlands and was called 'snobs'.

A very similar variation called "beş taş", or "five rocks" again, is played by children in Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 with five
pebbles, where one is tossed into the air and the player tries to pick up those on the ground one by one, two by two, etc., before catching the pebble in the air.

In modern day Korea

Korea

Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

 a form of jacks called gonggi

Gonggi

Gonggi is a popular Korean children's game that is traditionally played using 5 or more small grape-sized pebbles. Nowadays, children buy colourful plastic stones instead of finding pebbles. It can be played alone or with friends...

is played by children. The difference being that in this similar game there are five weighted plastic 'stones' called gonggi and the game is played without a rubber ball. The goal of the game is to throw one gonggi into the air, snatch up another on the ground, and catch the first gonggi before it hits the floor. The game progresses in this fashion similar to jacks until all gonggi have been picked up. Then the gonggi are placed in the palm of the hand and flipped onto the back of the hand. Depending on how many land on your hand you add a certain amount of years. At the beginning of the game the players will determine how many years they are playing to.