Soldiers Games

[Rob Weaver]

Originally Posted by hanktrent

Was "hop step and jump" especially tied to Scandanavian cultures? I thought it was pretty widespread at the time.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

Apparently it was. I first encountered the game in a scandanavian context, and given the large percentage of Norwegians in the 7th, just assumed that that's how it followed them.
So this "Checkered Game of Life" seems to play like "Chutes and Ladders." Would I be correct in that assumption?

[mmescher]

We did a search of google books and found references to the game "Hop, Step, and Jump" from the 1830's in England and the 1840's in the United States. So I think it is safe to conclude it was widespread in the United States by the 1860's and, further, that some of the younger soldiers might have played it when they were growing up.

Without going into a full discussion of "Checkered Game of Life" rules, I don't think it should be compared to what we now know as "Chutes and Ladders." In Checkered Game of Life, on every turn, the player has the opportunity to make a decision, e.g., if you spun a 1, you could go one square up or down or, if you spun a 4 you would have a double decision of one or two squares up or down. So you have quite a bit of control over your pathway and the winner is the first player to amass a fixed number of points, regardless of where that player is on the board at the time.

From what I can determine about Chutes and Ladders (originally Snakes and Ladders), it is a variation of a pursuit game where you proceed numerically from the start to the last square. The chutes and ladders come in when, if you land on certain special squares you are permitted to advance by a significant amount or, on other squares, you are forced to go back a significant distance. The determining factor in whether you advance or go back is whether the special square is a virtue (you go forward) or a vice (you go backward). In this regard, it bears more resemblance to “The Mansion of Happiness” which was a children’s game played during the civil war period. As a final distancing of Checkered Game of Life from Snakes/Chutes and Ladders, from what I can determine from secondary sources, the game didn’t enter England from India until the latter portion of the 19th century and wasn’t published in the United States until 1943, although games could have come into the United States from England before then. But, in any case, it doesn’t appear from these sources that it was a civil war game.

Michael Mescher

[Rob Weaver]

Well, I didn't mean that the 2 games were related; I meant was the game-play similar. From your description apparently not.

[mmescher]

By posting an assumption, I could see the next step that has sometimes happened when other people post assumptions. The post will remind some other person of the game (or other item being discussed) and think that, since it is "ole-timey" (in this case, since the game helped teach social values as some of the period games did, it might be considered a likely candidate for the civil war period) that it would be fine for a civil war impression. So my response, rather than just being a "no, that assumption isn't correct" was oriented on laying snakes/chutes and ladders to rest as inappropriate for the civil war period before the notion started gaining momentum.

Michael Mescher

[Rob Weaver]

While I can understand that as a concern, that wasn't really the direction I was going by asking if the game play was similar. I play a lot of board games, wargame, and collect antique toys. There are really only a few patterns that board games fall into and I was just trying to get an idea of which pattern this one fits in. I wasn't trying to insinuate that Chutes and Ladders was in any way a mid-19th century game, just curious if the two happened to fall into the same broad game type. sort of like asking if chess and checkers are related since they both use the same type of board. In the broadest sense, they share a similar purpose, arrived at by similar means: denying board space and removing pieces from play. However, they're not historically related either. I don't think anyone is going to drag a copy of Chutes and Ladders to ye olde locale event based on our conversation.