How to Eat a Horse Quiz - Children's Games | Games & Toys

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. As the introduction suggests, there is a game in which one unlucky child will find themselves revealing that they just ate a horse. What is the first line of this playground game?

Answer: I won (one) a horse

This game requires finding an innocent who doesn't know what they are in for, and starting off with:
Player 1 - I won (one) a horse
Player 2 - I two a horse
Player 3 - I three a horse
The game continues until the eighth player announces, "I eight a horse", and everyone rolls around laughing. Nobody plays this game more than once without making sure they won't be the eighth contributor to the chain!

A similar duping game involves keys and locks. Player one states that they are a certain type of lock, and player two responds that they are the same type of key: "I am a gold lock." "I am a gold key." After several reasonable materials, the first player says "I am a don (or mun) lock", after which the other player must admit to being a donkey or a monkey. Again, usually only played once.

2. Today I see a line of children walking between two players who are holding each other's hands and forming an arch. All of a sudden, they drop their arms and trap a child! What famous bridge were they almost certainly singing about during this game?

Answer: London Bridge

"London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down,
London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady."

At the end of the verse, the 'bridge' players drop their arms, capturing the child inside them. What happens next can be any one of a number of things. I have a memory from childhood of the captors swinging their arms from side to side and jostling the captive while chanting "Take the keys and lock him/her up, lock him/her up, lock him/her up; Take the keys and lock him/her up, My fair lady" before proceeding to the next stage. The captive is asked to pick one of the two teams being formed by the game. Sometimes they choose a person, sometimes they are asked to make a random choice, such as Gold Team vs Silver Team, and don't know which team they will be on. They whisper their choice to one of the captors, who know which team is which, and wait for the game to continue. This repeats until all players have been formed into two teams, who then compete in a tug-of-war. Sometimes the verses used for the marching phase are changed to suggest how the bridge can be repaired: "Build it up with sticks and stones", Build it up with iron bars", Build it up with silver and gold", and other suggestions can replace the "London Bridge is falling down" portion of the song.

The origins of this game, which has been played for over 500 years, are obscure. Nor is it clear which of the bridges to be found in London is the subject of the song. More discussion can be found in "Chronicles of London Bridge" (1877) by Richard Thomson.

3. Jumping rhymes are universal in feel, but quite varied in local detail (which all the current players know exactly, and will remember 50 years later). One rhyme that we used to chant (in Massachusetts in the 1960s) while swinging the rope back and forth along the ground for the jumper to hop over was "Blue bells, cockle shells, Eevy, ivy, over". What happened after the last word of this chant?

Answer: The rope swinging changed to a full circle

I have found too many variants on this chant to even start to list, but they all lead to changing the rope action from swinging along the ground to a full overhead circling motion. At this point, a new chant is usually started. Often, it will be a counting chant that will continue until the jumper misses and lands on or gets tangled in the rope.

The jumper who reaches the highest number will win the round. There are zillions of these! One I recall being very popular among jumpers of a certain age was "Susie and Johnny, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, How many kisses did she get? One, two, ..." Of course, the jumper's name and that of a boy known to all were inserted to replace Susie and Johnny.

4. In the game of Elastics, two players stand with a large loop of elastic stretched (only slightly) around their ankles, feet apart at shoulder width. The active player then performs a series of steps according to an agreed routine, while onlookers chant the appropriate words. One such routine uses the chant "Inside, Outside, Left side, Right side, Inside, On". What does the active player do when the word "On" is called?

Answer: Steps on the elastic and presses it to the ground

"Inside" requires the player to have both their feet inside the elastic loop; Outside means they must jump to place both feet outside the loop. "Left side" may mean, depending on where and when the game is played, either jumping so that both of their feet are outside the loop on their left side, or jumping so that their left foot is outside and their right foot is inside; "Right side" is the mirror image of this. "On" requires the player to pin the elastic to the ground, using either foot. If the routine, which can be more complex than this example, is successfully completed, the elastic is raised to sit around the knees rather than the ankles. Subsequent elastic levels may include thighs, waist, underarm, and neck.

The player who reaches the highest position with a correct routine wins. Or, in the continuous form of the game, each player who goes out replaces the longest-serving holder, who joins the back of the queue.

5. The game of conkers, played most extensively in the British Isles, does not involve any chant while playing, but it is a common superstition that your conkers will be more likely to conquer if you say (something like) which of the following when you find the first horse chestnut seed of the season?

Answer: Iddly oddly onker, my first conker

A conker is made by threading a piece of string through a hole in the glossy brown seed. The string is held and the horse chestnut swung so that it collides with that of the other player. (I won't go into all the typically detailed rules of how this is done, and what happens if ..., since there are lots of variants, and children all learn their local rules in their first season of competition.) The player whose conker lasts the longest without being completely destroyed wins. Dedicated competitors may toughen their horse chestnut seed in advance by soaking it in vinegar, or baking it, but some consider this cheating.

I grew up with a horse chestnut tree in our neighbor's yard, from which we avidly collected the seeds, but the children in the neighbourhood didn't play conkers, we just competed to see who could get the most in their collection!

6. Some songs are accompanied by hand movements, which replace the words as the song is repeated. What is the name of the dog whose name is spelled out in the first verse of one such game, with one letter at a time being replaced by a handclap in each subsequent verse?

Answer: Bingo

"There was a farmer had a dog, and Bingo was his name-o
B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O
And Bingo was his name-o."

On the second time through, the O is replaced by a clap; next time the change goes B-I-N-clap-clap, and so on until the letters have all been completely replaced. (In one episode of "The Simpsons", Bart is seen to add an extra clap during his first day of school, which results in a permanent negative notation on his record, a sad misuse of power.)

Sometimes the gestures can be more complex, and the replacement may be from the start rather than from the end, as in this song (as sung and performed at a summer camp in Maine in the 1960s):
"In a cabin in the woods (draw a square in the air to represent the cabin)
Little man by the window stood (make a circle with thumb and forefinger of each hand, hold in front of eyes)
Saw a rabbit hopping by (hold up two fingers in a V for rabbit ears, hop them along)
Knocking at his door. (make knocking motion with one hand)
"Help me! Help me! Help!" he cried, (swing hands in the air on each 'help')
"Or the hunter will shoot me down." (make hand into a shooting gun)
"Little rabbit, come inside, (make welcoming circle gesture with arm)
Safely to abide." (arm motion as if cradling a baby)"

On the next verse, hum the tune while completing the motion for the first line, then sing the rest. Each time your hum one more line before singing, until the final time through involves only humming and hand gestures.

7. When a group of kids have to walk a long way, someone is likely to suggest a marching chant to keep their minds off the tedium. Which of the following is a typical starting line for such a chant?

Answer: Left, left, left right left

There are many marching chants, but it is very common to start with 'Left' or 'Right', to get everyone using that foot at the same time before proceeding with the rest of the chant. One such is:
"Left, left, left right left
I left my wife alone in the kitchen
With forty-eight children in starving condition
Without any gingerbread
Left, left, left right left (etc.)"

The commas in the first line indicate a pause while the right foot is put forward; the left foot is subsequently matched with the accented syllables. Inevitably, the fact that there are sometimes two short syllables and sometimes only one means that somebody will get out of step, and everyone gets to pause and have a laugh before moving on.

8. Clapping games usually involve a complex series of hand movements to be completed, but sometimes the clapping is simply a background to force players to improvise their answers in a timely fashion. One such game is "A my name is Alice", in which each player has to complete a series of four statements for their turn. Which of the following lines could NOT be part of the turn that starts "A my name is Alice"?

Answer: My favourite food is blueberries

Players sit in a circle, and clap hands then slap their knees in alternation. The first player makes an agreed series of statements such as "A my name is Alice, my husband's name is Alex, we come from Ararat, and we sell apples." The next player (moving clockwise around the circle) then repeats the formula, but the key words must start with B: "B my name is Betty, my husband's name is Barney, we come from Bendigo, and we sell blueberries".

The formula can be varied, and is agreed on at the start of each game.

It may include a child's name, a favourite food or color, etc. Hesitation so long that the rhythm of the clapping has to be stopped leads to elimination.

9. There are lots of counting-out games, which we used to use to decide who would be 'It' at the start of a game for which that was necessary. What vegetable is associated with the counting-out game in which players hold their fists in the centre of the circle, and the counter hits each fist in turn around the circle?

Answer: Potato

"One potato, two potato, three potato, four,
Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more."

The person whose fist is tapped (or thumped, depending on the counter) on the word 'more' is out. Counting starts again with the next person. Elimination is continued until only one player remains. My mathematically-inclined twin brother quickly worked out how to manipulate the game by choosing the right position to start, given a particular number of people in the game. Once we got sick of having him always manipulate it so that he was or was not "It", depending on the game, we found an alternative chant whose unpredictability reduced his advantage. It went something like "Jellybeans, jellybeans, in a dish; How many pieces do you wish?" - the player who was selected on the word 'wish' chose a number, and counting proceeded until that number was reached on the player to be eliminated. Of course, he was good at choosing the number when it was his turn, but sometimes got eliminated first.

10. This one is not exactly a chant, and not a playground game, but a good car game which brings us back to the horses with which we started. You need to be in a rural area or the kids will give up really fast. When you spot a horse, you score a point. What do you need to be driving past for one player to be able to tell the others to 'Bury Your Horses'?

Answer: Cemetery

I am sure other animals can be used, but I like it with horses. First player to spot a horse claims it and scores a point. If you spot a field, you can claim as many points as there are horses in the field. If a property has horses in multiple fields, different players can claim each field. Keep going until someone gets bored, and the one with the most horses wins. BUT if you drive past a cemetery, the first player to realize it and say "Bury your horses" makes all the other players lose their points, and start over. If you regularly drive over the same road, players can introduce the variant of being able to score from a farm that they know will be coming up by claiming it just before it comes into view.

The catch is that you lose a point for any non-horse, such as a cow or sheep, that is in the field.

Source: Author looney_tunes

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor WesleyCrusher before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

How to Eat a Horse Trivia Quiz

Children's Games

Let's visit the world of playground games and chants, where an unlucky child may find themselves confessing to having eaten a horse. Many variants of these exist around the world, and details have evolved over time, but the children play on.

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