Il n’existe pas de règles officielles

Il n’existe pas de règles officielles. Celles-ci se transmettent entre enfants //
There are no official rules. They are passed on from one kid to another.

Inspired by today’s French word of the day “la marelle” (Les enfants français jouent très souvent à la marelle pendant la récréation // French children very often play hopscotch during recess), I read a bit about the game in various languages.

The English Wikipedia article has a brave go at explaining the rules, and gives a few examples of possible variations. The “Popular culture” section mentions the novel Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar. I looked because I expected to find it there.

The French version is much more circumspect about the rules, as you can see from the phrase I used as a caption to the picture. The rules, it says, can vary between regions, towns and streets. Still, they do give “Règles les plus communes” (you can work out what that means). There is no “Popular culture” section at all.

And finally, the Russian article explains the rules in a (patchily) detailed fashion. Problem is, these rules are quite possibly applicable to just one place and one particular childhood (the author’s). The Cortazar’s novel, together with its Russian-only wordplay* contained in the title, is sadly missing from the article.

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* In Russian, the novel is called «Игра в классики», which is quite literal translation of Hopscotch (or Rayuela). The word “классики” in Russian means “hopscotch” or “classics”. The title, therefore, can be read as “The Game of Hopscotch” or “The Game of Classics”. I must add that when I heard of it first, I assumed the latter.