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It doesn’t get any more simple than Pick Up Sticks. Even the name just describes the game – you pick up the sticks. For such a basic concept, Pick Up Sticks can be extremely challenging, and remains popular hundreds of years after it was introduced.

 

The game was probably developed by the Native Americans, and was played with straws of wheat. They taught it on to the English settlers, and it began passing on from generation to generation. It began to be played with wheat-straw shaped pieces of wood, rather than actual straw. There were usually 25 sticks of wood, either painted several different colors, or made from six different shades of wood.

 

Players would pour the sticks out on the ground so that they lay in a jumble. Each player would take a turn trying to pick up individual sticks from the pile, one at a time, without moving any of the other sticks. If you moved another stick, you forfeited your turn, and the next player would go. This went on until all the sticks were picked up. A variation of the game included a black stick. If you picked this stick up, you could use it later in the game to separate two sticks that were touching if you wanted to pick one of them up.

 

Pick Up Sticks were easy to manufacture and had no merchandising rights to contend with, making them a staple of several toy lines. Today they’re usually made with plastic instead of wood – no one wants to get splinters while playing Pick Up Sticks. They’re simple to play, and amazingly fun, and continue to be a classic game.