Are You Getting Warmer? – Evolution of Hidden Object Games
PGA shelflist card from 1875
While I was writing up the description of the Hand Game in the article about the Caddo tribe, it reminded me of other “hide a small object” games. I tend to think of these types of games as parlor games, since they require almost nothing in the way of components, and are often played indoors.
I frequently use the simplest form of this type of game to choose the first player in some other two-player game. I’m sure you’re familiar with “Which Hand Will You Take.” Simply shuffle a small object behind your back from one hand to the other, then present two closed fists to your opponent. They win if they can guess which hand contains the object.
Uncertain Beginnings
There’s no way of knowing how old hiding games are. Being so basic, these types of games would likely have simply been passed down orally and taken for granted, so nobody would have felt a need to write about them. After all, hide a thing and look for it is about as basic as it gets. I imagine pretty much every civilization had children playing such games.
However, in 1766, Oliver Goldsmith mentioned a game called “Hunt the Slipper” in Chapter 11 of The Vicar of Wakefield. After briefly mentioning Blind Man’s Buff, he lists a few of the other games the children played:
Hot cockles succeeded next, questions and commands followed that, and last of all, they sate [sic] down to hunt the slipper.
As described by Goldsmith, children sit in a circle and someone stands in the middle while the kids pass around a shoe beneath their hands and legs. Players who aren’t holding the slipper pretend to pass it, to increase the confusion. The person in the center tries to find who has the shoe and catch it. Apparently in this version of the game, there’s an element of light hazing, as the author describes “thumping” the hunter when they’re facing away from the slipper.
An alternative mode of play has the center player close their eyes and count while the children in the circle pass the slipper behind their backs and someone sits on it by the time the count is done. Then the counting player tries to determine who’s hiding the slipper based on facial expressions or other body language.
Getting Smaller
According to one author (William Holloway, in A General Dictionary of Provincialisms), by 1838, Hunt the Slipper was waning in popularity. Around the same time, a variation called Hunt the Thimble (or Hide the Handkerchief, Hide the Key, etc.) were gaining prominence.
This version of the game was closer to an Easter egg hunt. The player who is “It” sends everyone else out of the room while they hide a designated small object somewhere within it. Then the other players enter and try to find the hidden item. Whoever finds it first wins, and takes the role of “It” in the next game.
One interesting house rule is for the object to be “hidden in plain sight.” That is, it must be positioned somewhere that doesn’t require moving anything else in the room, but not so obvious that it’s spotted immediately. Players who see the object say nothing – instead, they quietly sit down and wait for the other players. Once everyone’s found the item, the first player who sat gets to be “It” in the next round, while the last player to see it must pay some kind of forfeit, like a dare.
Some groups playing this version added an phrase to show you’d found it, with players calling out “Huckle buckle beanstalk!” as they sat down. Presumably, this was to add an element of tension or distraction to the remaining players still looking. Alternatively, it might have been a way to hint at the location, for people fast enough to see where the speaker was looking when they said it.
Warming it Up
While it’s fun to have a whole group of seekers, one particular variant of Hide the Thimble retained one aspect of Hunt the Slipper, where everyone but a single person knew where the object was hidden. This is the version of the game that I grew up with, though I didn’t know it was called Hot Boiled Beans or the rhyme that went along with it.
First, choose a player to be the seeker, or “It,” and send them out of the room. Everyone else agrees on a hiding place for the object, not necessarily in plain sight. Sometimes one player simply sits on the object, or otherwise hides it somewhere on their person. Then they call in the seeker with a rhyme:
Hot boiled beans and butter!
Walk in and find your supper!
Hot boiled beans and bacon!
It’s hidden and can be taken!
While “It” wanders around the room, the group gives hints about how close they are to the hiding spot, calling out increasing adjectives for “warm” or “hot” when they’re moving in the right direction, or variations of “cold” when they move away. Charles Dickens briefly mentioned this incarnation of the game in The Mystery of Edwin Drood in 1870.
A similar game, called Singing Hide the Thimble, works the same way, except the hiders sing while the seeker looks for the object. Singers get louder when “It” gets close, and sing more faintly when they’re further away from the goal.
Sweetening the Pot
Who wants beans when you can have candy? A German variation of Hot Boiled Beans plays more like an indoor version of a Mexican piñata. In Topfschlagen (“hit the pot”), the player is blindfolded and given a wooden spoon. Place some candy underneath a pot somewhere in the room, spin the player around, and set them loose.
The player then crawls around the space, whacking the floor (or furniture, or even inattentive guests!) with the spoon, trying to find the pot containing the prize. Everyone else calls out “hot” or “cold”, guiding the player to the goal.
Who Needs an Object?
All of that leads up to the parlor game which intrigued me the most when researching for this article, just because I’d never heard of it, yet I loved the concept. In Magic Music, nothing is hidden at all. Instead, the player chosen as “It” steps out of the room while everyone else decides on a simple task, such as:
- Picking up and moving an object to a new position
- Walking a specific path
- Tapping a series of items in the correct sequence
- Standing still and gesturing a certain way
Once the task has been agreed upon, everyone starts tapping their feet or humming loudly, to summon “It” back into the room. From this point on, nobody may speak to the player. Keep the volume the same, until “It” starts to do something related to the task, like moving toward a chosen object. Lower the volume whenever the player is on the right track, but raise it again whenever they do something off-task. The goal for the player is to complete the task and silence the mysterious music.
For example, imagine the task is simply to move a specific empty chair to a designated spot. Everyone starts making loud music to summon “It” into the room. Every time the player moves in the direction of the chair, the music softens – this is the easy part, similar to Hot Boiled Beans. Once “It” arrives at the chair, they have to figure out what to do with it. Touching the chair lowers the volume, but sitting down raises it again, so that can’t be right. Eventually, the player picks up the chair, and the volume drops again. Walking in the wrong direction raises the volume, but it gets quieter when they head toward the chosen spot. Finally, they’re in the correct position, the music barely audible, unless they step in any direction. Everyone goes silent when the player sets down the chair and the task is complete.
This game seems like it can be a lot of fun, but players must remember to avoid too much complexity, or frustration can get out of hand.
Final Thoughts
I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, in a generation expected to go outside and play. Being inside typically meant chores, so we rarely did so unless the weather was against us. As a kid, I was quite familiar with boredom and thinking of creative ways to combat it. That might be why these old parlor games are so interesting to me. Some of them kept getting passed on (or recreated – they’re not usually complicated, after all), but I can’t help but wonder about the games that fell out of favor.
If you’re curious to find more, searching for “Victorian parlor games” will usually put you on the right track. The Internet Archive has a ton of books about games and culture from the 1800s and earlier. Just be aware that it might be buried in books of riddles and other visual games. The authors often assume familiarity with the culture of the time, so they might take for granted that you already know some other game, and only explain a few rules that differ. Absolutely worth the hunt, though.
