Sport and Games Atlas

How The Game Is Played
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Game

Queenie, Queenie, who's got the ball?

Deduction and Guessing Games

Queenie, Queenie, who's got the ball? is a children's playground guessing game played with a ball and four or more players. One player is chosen to be Queenie and stands facing away from the rest of the group before throwing the ball backward over her shoulder without looking; if she looks while throwing, she is immediately out and a new Queenie is chosen. Whichever player catches or retrieves the ball hides it behind their back along with everyone else in the group, so that Queenie cannot tell by sight who is actually holding it. The group then chants a traditional taunting rhyme, and when it finishes Queenie turns around and must guess which player is hiding the ball, usually across a limited number of attempts. A player who is correctly named must admit to holding the ball rather than lie about it, and if Queenie guesses correctly on her final attempt, the player caught holding the ball becomes the new Queenie for the next round. The rhyme chanted during the game varies by region, with Wikipedia recording an East London version dating to the 1950s alongside other local variants.

Facts
Sport
Game Type (category)
Playground Game 1
Classification
Player Count
Two-Player 1
Game Type
Playground game 1
Sources
1. Queenie, Queenie, who's got the ball? (Wikipedia)
  • Lead paragraph, first sentence
    Queenie, Queenie, who's got the ball is a common children's playground game.
  • entity record, description lead (player-count)
    Queenie, Queenie, who's got the ball? is a children's playground guessing game played with a ball and four or more players. One player is chosen to be Queenie and stands facing away from the rest of the group before throwing the ball backward over her shoulder without looking; if she looks while throwing, she is immediately out and a new Queenie is chosen. Whichever player catches or ret
View the Source

Take a Related Quiz

Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.