City-Country-River
City, country, river - regionally also city, name, country and similar variants - is the name of a writing, knowledge and quiz game .
history
The year this game was made is unknown. It is certain that it was already being played by privately taught pupils at the end of the 19th century. From there it drew ever larger circles and was also well received in group lessons by church and political organizations. Students played it mostly in their free time . Before it found its way into school lessons, a different understanding of lessons first had to take place in the curriculum . Nowadays it can be found as a suggestion in many language and specialist books .
description
requirements
For this game you only need a piece of paper and a pen per participant. The number of participants is unlimited, sometimes whole school classes play . The players should be able to master the alphabet as well as be a little interested in geography . However, the latter is not necessarily a prerequisite.
Basic rules
The participants agree on a basic scheme. There are hardly any limits to your ingenuity. Usually there are at least three areas ( city , country , river ), but the game can also include seven or more categories. The following example shows a common combination; but other categories can also be used, such as musical instrument , company, celebrity, street or stop name, etc.
| city | country | flow | Surname | job | plant | animal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duisburg | Denmark | Danube | Dieter | Lathe operator | dahlia | Badger |
| ... |
Each player enters this scheme on their sheet of paper. Now the letter is determined with which all terms to be searched for must begin. This is done alternately, with one person saying the alphabet softly and another calling “stop”, or to prevent cheating, by stabbing written paper with a pencil without looking. Now everyone starts to write. Who finishes first, i.e. H. has filled all categories with at least one term, this announces loudly. Everyone must now finish writing. Alternatively, a fixed period of time is set in advance.
Rating
There are different ideas here. What they all have in common is that words that are only available once during the reading and comparison that are now taking place score more points than multiple, so-called doublets . A common rule is that bonus points are awarded if a player is the only one in a category to have a correct answer. The winner is the one who has collected the most points after an agreed number of laps.
possible solutions
In the classic variant (city, country, river, name, profession, plant, animal), international and scientific spellings can also be used with prior approval, although some solutions are difficult to prove without a reference work .
Which solutions are allowed should be agreed between all participants before the game; For example, whether foreign words (e.g. "Xenophidia" as an animal), dialect (e.g. "red cabbage" as a plant), international spellings (e.g. "Zambesi" as a river) or abbreviations (e.g. "USA" as a country) or short forms (Eg "Waldi" as a name (for Waldemar)) are allowed. The abbreviation itself should also be discussed beforehand, for example whether a minimum number of letters must be written, whether at least the field must be filled out in full or whether abbreviation is generally prohibited.
There should also be agreement on how exactly to interpret the areas in order to avoid disputes. It should be determined in advance whether only independent states can be named under Land (e.g. the Netherlands , United Kingdom ) or whether the interpretation should be less restrictive (e.g. Holland , England , Sauerland , Lummerland ). Similarly, it should be clarified, for example, whether the category city only includes real cities with city rights or whether municipalities are also allowed, whether small streams are also recognized as rivers, etc.
Ideally, reference works should be available in order to be able to decide in contentious cases. If larger groups play this game, it can be beneficial if one player in turn sits out and acts as a referee or, in general, a particularly capable and neutral player is appointed.
Complete solutions are circulating on the Internet that use foreign languages for exotic letters (Q, X, Y) in order to completely fill in the gaps. In German, it is not possible to fill in all 182 gaps in the example scheme mentioned above (7 groups of 26 letters each) because there are no countries that begin with Q, X and Y. But if you allow states and territories to apply here as a makeshift, it is possible (e.g. Québec , Xinjiang , Yorkshire ).
Adaptations
- From October 1990 to September 1991 Viktor Worms hosted the program Stadt Land Fluß on Tele 5 , which was based on the game.
- In their weekly show Salon Helga on the Austrian radio station FM4, the two cabaret artists Christoph Grissemann and Dirk Stermann occasionally play a modification of the game with a live listener, which they describe as city, country, reason for divorce and which consists of deliberately curious, daily political issues.
- RTL II has been broadcasting the program Stadt, Land ... since January 30, 2012 . In the program, which is only available in the "Celebrity Special", the other four categories are newly specified in each of the two rounds and only one letter is played with them. Since this is a comedy show, the categories like things to screw on or sure signs of metrosexuality aim to produce humorous responses. Another part of the comedy factor is that candidates can explain less meaningful and duplicate answers in order to still get full points.
- The card game snap, land, river! by Haim Shafir builds on city, country, river .
- From MB Spiele there was the game Harte Nuss , in which six categories are also determined by category cards printed on both sides and the letters are determined by six freely rotatable letter cubes enclosed in a hexagonal cage. This means that each round has its own initial letter for each of the six categories.
Trademark litigation
In 2012 and 2013, a large German game publisher tried to enforce trademark rights to city, country and river . The Berlin Regional Court rejected the judgment of 4 April 2013. the action. In the appeal hearing, the Berlin Court of Appeal also dismissed the appeal and did not allow an appeal. Both courts equally determined that Stadt, Land, Fluss is a classic game that has been played for generations and that no one can obtain the trademark rights to.
