A teetotum (or T-totum) is a form of spinning top most commonly used for gambling games. It has a polygonal body marked with letters or numbers, which indicate the result of each spin. [1] [2] Usage goes back to (at least) ancient Greeks and Romans, with the popular put and take gambling version going back to medieval times. [2] A perinola is a six-sided top with similar gameplay most commonly used in Latin America.
In its earliest form, the body was square (in some cases via a stick through a regular six-sided die [3] ), marked on the four sides by the letters A (Lat. aufer, take), indicating that the player takes one from the pool, D (Lat. depone, put down) when a fine has to be paid, N (Lat. nihil, nothing), and T (Lat. totum, all), when the whole pool is to be taken. [4]
Other accounts give such letters as P, N, D (dimidium, half), and H or T or other combinations of letters. [4] Some other combinations that could be found were NG, ZS, TA, TG, NH, ND, SL and M, which included the Latin terms Zona Salve ("save all"), Tibi Adfer ("take all"), Nihil Habeas ("nothing left"), Solve L ("save 50") and Nihil Dabis ("nothing happens").
Joseph Strutt, who was born in 1749, mentions the teetotum as used in games when he was a boy: [4]
When I was a boy, the tee-totum had only four sides, each of them marked with a letter; a T for take all; an H for half, that is of the stake; an N for nothing; and a P for put down, that is, a stake equal to that you put down at first. Toys of this kind are now made with many sides and letters. [5]
The teetotum was later adapted into dreidel, a Jewish game played at Hanukkah, and as the perinola, a game played in many Latin American countries. The dreidel typically has four sides" N (נ) for nothing; G (ג) for take all; H (ה) for take half, and S (ש) or P (פֹּ) for put one in. These letters form an acronym, in Hebrew, which recalls the miracle for which the holy day is celebrated; and, in Yiddish, which explains the rules of the game. The perinola typically has six sides: toma uno or take one, toma dos or take two, toma todo or take all, pon uno or add one, pon dos or add two, todos ponen or everyone adds one to the pot.
Some modern teetotums have six or eight sides, and are used in commercial board games in place of dice. The original 1860 version of The Game of Life used a teetotum in order to avoid the die's association with gambling.
A teetotum is mentioned by "Martinus Scriblerus", [5] the pen name of a club of 18th-century satirical writers.
In Louisa May Alcott's Rose in Bloom , a character learning to dance says, "A fellow must have some reward for making a teetotum of himself."
Virginia Woolf, in her novel The Voyage Out , has Hewett say to Hearst: "I see a thing like a teetotum spinning in and out – knocking into things – dashing from side to side – collecting numbers – more and more and more, till the whole place is thick with them."
The 19th-century English poet William Ernest Henley wrote the Double Ballade on the Nothingness of Things which opened with the lines:
The big teetotum twirls,
And epochs wax and wane
As chance subsides or swirls;
But of the loss and gain
The sum is always plain.
Read on the mighty pall,
The weed of funeral
That covers praise and blame,
The -isms and the -anities,
Magnificence and shame:—
'O Vanity of Vanities!' [6]
In Lewis Carroll's fantasy Through the Looking-Glass , Alice's movements about the Old Sheep Shop provoke its proprietor (the White Queen transformed into a sheep) to ask, "Are you a child, or a teetotum?"
In Dickens' Our Mutual Friend a line of strange-looking wooden objects sticking out of the river near the Plashwater Weir Mill Lock is described as being "like huge teetotums standing at rest in the water". (Book IV, chapter 1)
In Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 dark comedy short story The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether , one of the patients of the asylum is described as believing he had been converted into a "tee-totum": [7]
"And then," said the friend who had whispered, "there was Boullard, the tee-totum. I call him the tee-totum because, in fact, he was seized with the droll but not altogether irrational crotchet, that he had been converted into a tee-totum. You would have roared with laughter to see him spin. He would turn round upon one heel by the hour, in this manner – so-
Here the friend whom he had just interrupted by a whisper, performed an exactly similar office for himself.
In the United Kingdom, the same game with a six-sided die is called "put and take", the sides of the die are- "Put one", "Take one", "Put two", "Take two", "All put" (every player puts in) and "Take all". This is usually played for small stakes (e.g. "one" is one British penny) as amusement rather than to win money.
Craps is a dice game in which players bet on the outcomes of the roll of a pair of dice. Players can wager money against each other or against a bank. Because it requires little equipment, "street craps" can be played in informal settings. While shooting craps, players may use slang terminology to place bets and actions.
Hanukkah is a Jewish festival commemorating the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE.
Dice are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing games, and games of chance.
Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.
A game of chance is in contrast with a game of skill. It is a game whose outcome is strongly influenced by some randomizing device. Common devices used include dice, spinning tops, playing cards, roulette wheels, numbered balls, or in the case of digital games random number generators. A game of chance may be played as gambling if players wager money or anything of monetary value.
A spinning top, or simply a top, is a toy with a squat body and a sharp point at the bottom, designed to be spun on its vertical axis, balancing on the tip due to the gyroscopic effect.
A dreidel, also dreidle or dreidl, is a four-sided spinning top, played during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The dreidel is a Jewish variant on the teetotum, a gambling toy found in Europe and Latin America.
Pig is a simple dice game first described in print by John Scarne in 1945. Players take turns to roll a single die as many times as they wish, adding all roll results to a running total, but losing their gained score for the turn if they roll a 1.
Tabletop games or tabletops are games that are normally played on a table or other flat surface, such as board games, card games, dice games, miniature wargames, or tile-based games.
Bunco is a dice game with twelve or more players, divided into groups of four, trying to score points while taking turns rolling three dice in a series of six rounds. A bunco is achieved when a person rolls three-of-a-kind and all three numbers match the round number which is decided at the beginning of the round.
Cee-lo is a gambling game played with three six-sided dice. There is not one standard set of rules, but there are some constants that hold true to all sets of rules. The name comes from the Chinese Sì-Wŭ-Liù (四五六), meaning "four-five-six". In America it is also called "See-Low," "Four-Five-Six," "The Three Dice Game," "Roll-off!," and by several alternative spellings, as well as simply "Dice." In China it is also called "Sān Liù Bàozi" (三六豹子), or "Three-Six Leopards". In Japan, it is known as "Chinchiro" (チンチロ) or "Chinchirorin" (チンチロリン).
Chaturaji is a four-player chess-like game. It was first described in detail c. 1030 by Al-Biruni in his book India. Originally, this was a game of chance: the pieces to be moved were decided by rolling two dice. A diceless variant of the game was still played in India at the close of the 19th century.
Poker dice are dice which, instead of having number pips, have representations of playing cards upon them. Poker dice have six sides, one each of an Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, and 9, and are used to form a poker hand.
Long dice are dice, often roughly right prisms or antiprisms, designed to land on any of several marked lateral faces, but neither end. Landing on end may be rendered very rare simply by their small size relative to the faces, by the instability implicit in the height of the dice, and by rolling the long dice along their axes rather than tossing. Many long dice provide further insurance against landing on end by giving the ends a rounded or peaked shape, rendering such an outcome physically impossible.
Wheel of Fortune is a British television game show based on the American show of the same name created by Merv Griffin. Contestants compete to solve word puzzles, similar to those used in Hangman, to win cash and prizes. The title refers to the show's giant carnival wheel that contestants spin throughout the course of the game to determine their cash and/or prizes.
Glückshaus(House of Fortune) is a gambling dice game for multiple players. It is played with two dice on a numbered board. The name was coined in the 1960s by Erwin Glonnegger who also created the modern design of the board by merging older dice games with a staking board for a card game.
Demon Dice, originally published as Chaos Progenitus, is a collectible dice game for two or more players created by Lester Smith and Tim Brown.
The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a board game originally created in 1860 by Milton Bradley as The Checkered Game for Life, the first ever board game for his own company, the Milton Bradley Company. The Game of Life was US's first popular parlour game. The game simulates a person's travels through their life, from early adulthood to retirement, with college if necessary, jobs, marriage, and possible children along the way. Up to six players, depending on the version, can participate in a single game. Variations of the game accommodate up to ten players.
Switch 16 is a children's board game published by Tomy in 2001.
The ancient Romans had a variety of toys and games. Children used toys such as tops, marbles, wooden swords, kites, whips, seesaws, dolls, chariots, and swings. Gambling and betting were popular games in ancient Rome. Legislation heavily regulated gambling, however, these laws were likely not enforced. Tali, Terni lapilli, Duodecim Scripta, and Ludus Latrunculorum were all popular games in ancient Rome. They were similar to poker, tic-tac-toe, backgammon, and chess respectively. Nine men's morris may also have been a popular game in ancient Rome. Roman children also played games simulating historical battles and could pretend to be important government officials.
