Jack Straws

An indoor game (fiti) is played by flicking light rods off a roll of matting with the finger and thumb. The rods are about 18 inches long and range about the thickness of a lead pencil. The wood is mosooi, fu'afu'a, or the discarded aumafuti sticks after peeling off the bark of slender paper mulberry sticks. The number is large, but not fixed, varying with the number of people playing.

An ordinary pandanus leaf floor mat is rolled transversely and tied with sennit braid. The roll is set on end and a rod stuck upright in the folds to form a boundary at either side to prevent the bundle of jackstraws, which are laid on top of the mat end, from falling off. (See Plate XLIX, B.)

The game is played between two sides. All the players of one side follow in succession. Each man flicks off as many sticks as he can. If he misses, does not remove a stick off the end of the mat with a single flick, or removes more than one stick with one flick, he is out and the turn passes to the next. Each stick flicked off counts a point. When all the sticks are flicked off before a side has finished, the whole bundle is put back again on the mat. When all players of one side are out, their total score forms the number that the other side has to surpass.

The game sounds simple but the sticks get crossed on the mat and it becomes extremely difficult to flick one off without removing another.