Pick-up sticks

Pick-up sticks or pick-a-stick is a game of physical and mental skill. A bundle of "sticks", between 8 and 20 centimeters long, are held in a loose bunch and released on a table top, falling in random disarray. Each player, in turn, must remove a stick from the pile without disturbing the remaining ones. One root of the name "pick-up sticks" may be the line of a children's nursery rhyme "...five, six, pick-up sticks!" The game has spawned several variations such as Jackstraws (or Jack Straws), Spellicans, and Spillikins.

The sticks can be made from ivory, bone, wood, bamboo, straw, reed, rush, yarrow, or plastics.

Some Haida First Nation pick-up sticks are plain maple wood; they may also be decorated with abalone shell and copper.

Today, the most common pick-up game is Mikado. For details, see there.

The object of the game is to pick up the most sticks.

To begin the game, a bundle of sticks is somewhat randomly distributed so that they end up in a tangled pile. The more tangled the resulting (dis)array, the more challenging the game. In some versions of the game, any isolated sticks, or sticks lying alone, are removed.

The players attempt to remove a single stick, without moving any other stick. In some versions of the game, players use a tool to move the stick away from the pile; this "tool" may be one of the sticks, held aside before the game begins. In other versions, players must pick up the sticks by hand. In either case, players must not move any other things while attempting to remove the said stick; if any other stick moves, his turn ends immediately and he loses a turn. Players who successfully pick up a stick can then have another turn; the player keeps removing sticks until he causes a secondary stick to move.

The game is over when the last stick is removed. The winner is the player with the highest number of sticks picked up.

In some versions of the game, different-coloured sticks are worth different numbers of points, and the winner is the person with the highest score.

...
Wikipedia