Knife game

The knife game, also known by regional names including pinfinger, stabscotch, nerve, bishop, hand roulette, five finger fillet, or chicken, is a risk-based dexterity game in which a player places one hand flat on a table or hard surface with the fingers spread apart, then rapidly stabs a knife or other sharp point into the gaps between the fingers, alternating direction as quickly as possible while trying not to strike a finger. The game deliberately courts injury: a slip can cut or scar the player, and it historically posed real infection risk before antibiotics were available, and a folding-blade knife adds further danger because a fast strike can cause the blade to fold back onto the stabbing hand. Safer variants exist that substitute a blunt object, such as the eraser end of a pencil or a capped marker, for the blade. In European tradition the game is often treated as a boys' pastime demonstrating nerve and coordination, paralleling the manual dexterity emphasis of girls' clapping games, and it has appeared in films including Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water and Aliens, as well as in video games such as Red Dead Redemption.