jacks is very simular to knuckle bones, you have 5 bones to play with.Object of the game was to get right through about 10 stages with out a hitch.

You don’t need rules to play jacks, it’s a no-brainer. You throw the jacks down, throw the little ball up in the air and catch 1 jack. You do this until you have all the jacks in your hand. you throw the jacks down again and do this for two’s, threes, fours, etc. The skill is in knowing when to throw the jacks out from a wider pile (when you’re picking them up by ones), to an increasingly smaller pile (it’s easier to catch sets of two’s,threes, fours, and etc. when the jacks are closer together. Also you can pick jacks up seperated jacks in two moves as long as the ball only bounces once. Finally, when you”re up to the last number you just put the jacks down, toss the ball up and pick up the hole pile (flatsies). The more skilled of jack players would then proceed to play in revers. leave one down, then two, then three, etc. then pick up the whole pile when finished.

I’ve lately had occasion to recall a few more fancies than these. Do you remember “Elevators”? After picking up the jacks and catching the ball, we’d throw the jacks up in the air as well as the ball, catching the jacks in the other hand and catching the ball in the throwing hand. How about “Around the World”? After picking up the jacks, we’d have to circle the bouncing ball with the throwing hand before catching the ball. As we got older, we played more challenging fancies like “Black Widow.” That was onesies to tensies without missing. If you missed, you had to start from the beginning. We also played a longer version (onesies to tensies and back again) which we called “Blue Widow.” Don’t ask me why this wasn’t “Black Widow;” it

I got my kids some jacks, but they don’t seem to know enough about how to play, so they aren’t being used. I played jacks a lot as a kid; though we didn’t call them “fancies”, we did have a lot of variations. Eggs in the basket was always first, just putting the jacksinto your cupped left hand on placed on the floor. Then came pig in the pen: you held your left hand on the floor making a semi-circular “pen”–the little finger and thumb resting on the floor, fingers together but with a space between thumb and fingers. You did onesies, twosies, etc., each time sliding the required number of jacks into the pen. There was another that I can’t quite recall, something like “sheep over the fence”; you placed your left hand with the little finger resting on the floor and the palm vertical; you picked up the jacks and put them on the far side of this fence. I know we played about ten variations, but can’t remember more. Please post any more you can recall so I can teach my daughters.