Poison (game)

Poison is a traditional outdoor children's game, a physical variant of tag played by a circle of children holding hands around a small area marked out on the ground as the poison zone. Players in the circle try to force one another off balance and into the marked poison area, and the moment someone touches it, the whole group shouts a warning and scatters to find a piece of wood to stand on, since standing on wood makes a player briefly safe and even lets them taunt whoever is still chasing. Anyone caught away from a safe piece of wood becomes an additional catcher, so the number chasing grows as the round continues. A simpler variant recorded for Scout groups removes each player who touches the poison ground instead, continuing until only two players remain. The game is documented in Jessie H. Bancroft's 1909 collection Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium, part of a long tradition of recorded playground and recreational games from the early twentieth century.