Rules of Vintage Block Game

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I am certain that in one way or the other, you have interacted with some kind of block games. At first, the game may seem tricky to understand but, with a few verses of instructions, you are good to go. For example, if you are playing the famous Jenga block game which inspired blockoduko.

Jenga is a block game synonymous with the Savanna of East Africa. The game was introduced by British board game designer Leslie Scott born in Tanganyika, present-day Tanzania. The word Jenga is derived from ‘kujenga’, a Swahili word meaning building.

A few years later, Scott migrated to Ghana with her family, where she founded Jenga. In the early 1970s, Leslie Scott had a simple idea of building stacks of wooden blocks for as high as she could. To materialize her idea, she bought small pieces of wood in a sawmill in Takoradi, Ghana, where she was currently living and used them to build a pillar.

At first, the idea seemed crazy, but when she visualized it and showed it to her family, a cloud of interest descended on the game. In January 1983, Scott launched the game at London Toy Fair, introducing it to the world. She later began selling the game under its iconic brand name Jenga through her Leslie Scott Associates.

One of the earliest forms of the game can be found at the V&A Museum of Childhood. This game has been sitting here since 1982, thanks to Leslie’s revolutionary idea and creativity.

Rules of the game 

Though most of Jenga’s rules are still in play today, there are a few changes that were made to standardize the game. Jenga is played by 54 blocks with minor variations to complicate the stalking process.

Generally, each block measures 0.59 in × 0.98 in × 2.95 in or 1.5 cm × 2.5 cm × 7.5 cm. To start playing the game, a gamer sets up an initial tower build of 18 layers of 3 blocks per layer. However, when building the layers, blocks are placed adjacent to each other and at a right angle with the previous layer. In simple terms, if one layer of three blocks is facing in an east-west direction, the other layer will be facing north-south.

After building the tower, each player is required to remove one block of wood from any of the 18 levels other than the second last layer to the top. The removed block is then placed on the top layer to complete it.

Blocks may be removed from any layer, and the game will end after the tower collapses and the last person to ring it down is obviously the winner. Also, when playing, players are allowed to use only one hand, and each turn lasts for 10 seconds only.

Block games such as Jenga are easy to play. You need to observe key rules such as using one hand in the game and keeping time. But the winner is the last person to bring the stalk down.