Is that where you try to guess if it will have a “comb” at the top? I feel like I have half a memory but not a full one…
I am absurdly charmed to realise that other places in the world also pulled the seeds off these and had to say if it was a hen or rooster. Where I’m from you had to say one or the other before the other kid pulls the seeds off and if you guessed wrong the other kid would blow the seeds in your face. We also had a third option: chicken.
wait okay do you mind explaining a bit more about how you play this game? I have a vague idea of how to do it by yourself but I love it being social.
Before stripping the seeds the other person makes a guess if it’ll be hen (no comb) or rooster (comb)? I love the raised stakes.
where does the chicken come in?
lowkey want to practice this now
Sure! Though caveat this was in Iceland in the 90s and I haven’t played this in approximately 30 years. I also don’t know if the kids today still play it that way.
The saying is “hani, hæna, eða tittlingur?” i.e. “rooster, hen, or chicken?”. As a social game you need at least two people. Your friend picks up a straw of this plant, holds it out to you and says the line, and then you have to try to judge what the outcome will be. If you’re right, you keep going until you are wrong, at which point your friend blows the seeds in your face like with dandelions. Then you switch. With more than one kid playing you can make it a chain. By yourself doing it is more of a practice run to pull the seeds off because if you do it wrong or the straw breaks halfway through or something like that, then you’ve also lost.
The three choice options refer to the size of the smushed up seeds together and only vaguely the shape. We didn’t judge if the rooster had a comb, the rooster was the big one because it looked like a flashy rooster tail! So if you had a big bunch of seeds it was a rooster and if your bunch also had a trailing bit then it was a particularly successful rooster. Icelandic roosters look like this:
The hen was the average size bunch, with no trailing bit. If you got an average bunch but with a trailing bit then you would have to carefully judge between you whether this was just a small rooster or did it count as a hen, depending on how big the trailing bit was. If it was big enough to droop: rooster. and the chicken was a small bunch. You couldn’t always tell beforehand what the outcome would be because not all kids managed to get all the seeds and create a magnificent rooster tail - they might end up with a chicken. And a small straw with few seeds might turn out either a hen or chicken.
(There would be serious judging in any case of the result if it was ambiguous.)
My beloved mutual @pipariperho says they play with rooster, hen, and chicken in Finland too:
ALT
Though I don’t know if they play with the same rules as we did! I also have no idea how this is played in Denmark as I was 11 when I moved here so past the age of playing this game anymore. If any other Icelanders or Danes want to throw in their two cents, feel free.
I love this thank you so much for taking the time to write it all up. I am going to try playing this game now.
ALT
