SPINNING TOPS AND TOP GAMES
by Don Olney
1997
In a backyard in the United States, a grandfather makes a crude top that has a sharpened nail as a point. With a motion not practiced since he was a boy, he winds a string, throws his top with an audible buzz, and magically catches it spinning in his hand. He begins teaching a new generation the joy of spinning tops.
In Zimbabwe, a grandmother with a wide smile on her face kneels, and with a few quick snaps of her fingers sends a dozen tiny gum tree seed pods spinning in a delightful dance across the floor.
In Japan, a man whose ancestors for seven generations have entertained people of all ages, sends a brightly colored spinning disc walking down the sharp edge of a sword.
Spinning tops have been a favorite childhood toy in just about every culture on earth. One of the first toys many children have is a musical metal pump that sings at it spins. The spinning top teaches the child the first of many lessons about friction, balance and centrifugal force.
Top Games
Watching a top spin can be a joy all its own, but a wide variety of games can also be played with tops, both indoors and out.
“Knocking around objects” games: Not long after the first top was spun, someone thought to place stones or seeds or sticks in its path and see what would happen as the top danced around among them. The spinning top sent things flying. Tops were developed that would move around a lot, rather than spin quietly in one spot. Games like “Skittles,” “Bull in a China Closet” and “Crazy Traveler” came into being. To play “Bull in a China Closet,” for example, you set up several small bowling pins on an enclosed board, spin the top in the center of the board, and keep score as the spinning top travels around, knocking down pins like a crazy bowling ball.
In another long-established, popular game with multiple variations, the top, just above the tip, has a square bottom, which would knock small marble-like balls around a circular concave bowl. The balls the didn’t drop into point-score holes at the perimeter of the bowl would roll back to the center, once again hitting the top and being flung outward. Using a similar concept, “Battling Tops,” a modern game that’s intermittently revived, has two or more tops spinning at the same time, colliding until only one top remains spinning; the owner of that top is declared the winner.
One of the most common top games is “Put N Take.” In this game, instructions on the side of the top instruct the spinner to put chips into, or take chips from a “kitty”; the chips can be tokens or matches, or anything from raisins to silver dollars. The dreidel game, which is played as part of the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah, is a common example of this type of game.
Tops even once replaced dice in many board games. In the 19th century, dice were associated primarily with gambling, and many religious groups saw them as the work of the devil. But the common spinning top, called a “teetotum,” with up to twelve sides, could be used as dice, and they were free of any such image problem! Teetotums of bone and ivory can be found in many early games.
Top spinning workshops are held every year at the International Juggler’s Festival. [The 64th Annual IJA Festival will be held July 18-24, 2011, in Rochester, MN.]
Don Olney’s “The Little Book of Tops,” was published by Running Press. Don is retired from his “The Toycrafter” business but still active in top activities, and he reports (in 2011), “We have a very active international spinning top forum going now with an amazing level of interest – mostly in the peg tops and the various tricks to be done, etc, but a very wide ranging forum with lots of pics and videos of tops from around the world: http://www.ta0.com/forum/index.php.”
