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Put & Take
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| Title | Put & Take |
| Content | What historical evidence do we have for games with a "put & take" element? That is: There's a central pot/ bank, and some mechanic (usually a randomizer) leading to various outcomes of putting something into the pot, or taking something out.
Following this question on the Board Game Studies mailing list some instances were pointed out and are now collected here, very roughly in chronological order.
BGS emails Link 1, Link 2
Randomizers/games with explicit put & take instructions15th century14-sided Put & Take dieA fascinating 14-sided die dated to the second half of the 15th century carries German put & take commands: "Nimbs gar", "nimbs halb" etc.
16th centurySpinning dice (dreidel, tee-totum)?Better known examples would be the dreidel, which according to online sources came up in the 16th century, and teetotums marked not with pips or numbers, but with put and take commands (put 1, take 2 etc.). - Unfortunately I know of no hard sources or scholarly literature to back this up so far. A spinning die/ dreidel is shown on P. Bruegels painting of childrens games (dated ca. 1560), but whether it's a die with put & take results or numbers isn't evident.
Pela il ChiuPela il Chiu (pluck the owl) is famous example, a dice game with a board showing the put & take instructions for the potential outcomes of rolls with three six-sided dice. Pela il Chiu is documented from the late 16th century onwards.
17th centuryHainhofer, 6-sided put & take dieGreger Sundin points out die from the Pommersche Kunstschrank (i.e. from before 1617), now in Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin (inv. P 77b). A silver d6 (9x9x9 mm), with blue champlevé enamel letters, described in Philipp Hainhofer's contemporary inventory as " […] vnd ain geschmeltzter vexier wirfel mit buchstaben mit diser außlegung: N.A. nimb allain, scilicet das deine, L.S. laß stehn. T.A. trinkh auß, S.Z. setz zue, N.G. nimbs gar. N.H. nimbs halb." (Lessing, Julius, and Adolph Brüning. Der Pommersche Kunstschrank. Berlin: Kommissions-verlag bei Ernst Wasmuth A.-G., 1905, p. 44).Mitelli gamesFatih Parlak (see his PhD referenced under Pela il Chiu, above) points out that almost all of Mitelli's games are designed with this mechanism (e.g. Il Gioco del Aquila and Il Gioco della Verità). He says: "The mechanism is very suitable for typical chance-based printed board games and designers must have felt comfortable using it for their purposes because it allowed them to create games with many different themes."Long Lawrence/ LaurenceStick dice from England, four-sided or (later) eight-sided. Described by Willoughby, ca. 1660s
18th centuryLa Géographie UniverselleFatih Parlak: Later in the 18th century, Tira/Paga was incorporated into Goose games, too, which seems to have increased the possibility of new themes even more (see La Géographie Universelle). In other words, Tira/Paga accommodates countless themes (e.g love, courtship, vices and virtues, history, geography... you name it), which quality was used effectively for didactic purposes as well as propaganda in later periods.Gioco della Mea(18th/19th century), a game using a spinning arrow as randomizer
18th or 19th centuryRhombicuboctahedra (d26) from ZöblitzAlthough usually correctly recognized as modern, some writers saw them as Roman artifacts. This was defuted by Borhy.
Games with put & take depending on the changing situation16th century, maybe 15th cent.Game of SevenGames of Seven incorporate a put & take element, but whether you have to put or to take something depends on the current state of the field representing the result of your dice throw. Fields are numbered from 2 to 12, if you roll the number of an empty field, you have to put in a stake. If you roll the number of a field on which there's already a stake, you take it for yourself. In contrast to usual put & stake games, there's no central pot/ bank here. Boards for the Game of Seven date back to the 16th century, maybe even late 15th century.
Literary & dictionary referencesEnglishThe Oxford English Dictionary lists the following citations for totum:
Latin tōtum all, the whole, the initial T of which was one of the four letters inscribed on the teetotum: compare French toton, in Cotgrave and Dict. Acad. 1694–1740 totumBoth references (Cotgrave and Dict. Acad.) point to dictionaries. has some more info on these sources for the word. The meaning of totum (n.1) is stated to be the same as for = teetotum n.1. This word is an extension of totum, as the OED explains the etymology: Originally T totum , formed by prefixing to Latin tōtum ‘all, the whole’, its initial T, which stood for it on one of the four sides of the toy (itself in earlier use called simply a totum n.1, as in 17th cent. French totum, now toton).The meaning is given along extra information: A small four-sided disk or die having an initial letter inscribed on each of its sides, and a spindle passing down through it by which it could be twirled or spun with the fingers like a small top, the letter which lay uppermost, when it fell, deciding the fortune of the player; now, any light top (sometimes a circular disk pierced by a short peg), spun with the fingers, used as a toy. The letters were originally the initials of Latin words, viz. T totum, A aufer, D depone, N nihil. Subsequently they were the initials of English words, T being interpreted as take-all: see quot. 1801. On the French totum or toton, the letters are T, A, D, R, meaning, according to Littré, Totum, tout, Accipe, prends, Da, donne, Rien (nothing).The oldest quote is from 1720, and an interesting citation is the one from 1801 mentioned in the above explanation of the sense:
GermanLorenz Diefenbach/ Ernst Wülcker: Hoch- und niederdeutsches Wörterbuch der mittleren und neueren Zeit. Schwabe, Basel 1885, col. 364 (archive.org): drewurffel: tessera rotaria (from Balthasar Trochus, Vocabulorum rerum promptuariu[m], dated 1517 - haven't looked for the exact location in that book). The same quote is also in Lorenz Diefenbach: Glossarium latino-germanicum... 1857, p. 581a (Google Books) Deutsches (Grimmsches) Wörterbuch has an entry for Drehwürfel, but no citations.General weblinks
CreditsBased on contributions by Fatih Parlak, Malcolm J Watkins, Marco Tibaldini, Ulrich Schädler, Greger Sundin, Jonas Richter. This overview was put together by Jonas Richter. Additions and corrections are welcome! |
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