I first heard about both games on TV’s the Simpsons. Bart and Lisa were walking in or around water, or at least one of them was. And one kept saying “Marco!” while the other replied “Polo!” until their father told them to quit it. “Jinx” is something I have seen in more than one place on television. Apparently when two children say the exact same word, they both yell “Jinx!! Jinx!!” and, again according to the the Simpsons some rules then apparently apply.
I don’t know any kids, and I can honestly say I never played either one of these games when I was a kid. So you’re going to have help me out on this one. How do you play “Marco Polo” and what does “jinx” mean, in this context? And while we’re at it, does anyone know where these games originated? For now though, I just want to know the rules to each game.
Basically, for Marco Polo, the person who is “it” runs around the pool with their eyes closed. After the “it” person yells out “Marco!”, everyone playing the game replies, “Polo!” to inform the “it” person where they are. It’s just tag other than that.
When two people say the same thing at the same time, tradition has it that one quickly says “Jinx!” and then counts to ten. The other person then cannot talk until another speaks his/her name. If they do talk before someone calls out their name, they get a BRUTAL PUNCHING! There are about a thousand different variations of this “game.”
The hell if I know where these things originated from.
By the way, where do you live? I haven’t heard of many people who don’t know of these games.
All players are in the pool. The “it” person closes his or her eyes (but everyone cheats!) and tries to tag the other players. The player tagged becomes the new “it”.
To locate them, the “it” person calls “Marco!” and homes in on the returning calls of “Polo!”
Eventually you get the situation where a player will be trapped in a corner of the pool by the advancing “it”. They then must try jumping over “it”, swimming around them under water or getting out of the water to escape.
Getting out of the water is permissible, but risky. If the “it” player calls, “fish out of water!” while another player is not in contact with the pool water, then they become “it”.
At least, that’s how it’s played in my corner of Australia.
Marco Polo pretty much follows the rules described above.
As for Jinx, we beat each other up for talking fairly often, but It’s not usually related to having said “jinx” (although I have noticed a strong correlation between beatings and the calling out of names.)
Some variations on the rules of Jinx - from childhood in South Africa…
If plain “Jinx” is called, then the person jinxed cannot speak until their name is spoken - by anyone else. If “Personal Jinx” is called the jinxee cannot speak until the jinxer says his/her name. “Double Jinx” means the name must be spoken twice before the jinxee can speak again, while the rare but lethal “Double Personal Jinx” is self-explanatory.
The punishments meted out varied, but they were always brutal and inflicted with glee…
Both games are really popular in this part of the world too, with pretty much exactly the same rules applying. I enjoyed playing marco polo a lot as a kid. Jinx was, and remains, extremely irritating for me (my little cousins insist on playing it with me!)
I don’t know about Jinx, but in Buffalo whenever you said the same thing at the same time as someone else, the first to shout “You owe me a beer!” gets … well, owed a beer by the other person.
Damn! How did that happen? I hit submit, and when the page reloaded, my post wasn’t displayed. So I retyped and reposted, and voila, the first one is back there!
Boy, that’s not how we played jinx! With us, the first one to say “jinx” after realizing they had just said the same thing as someone else was owed a coke by the other.
