Finding That Old Box
Okay, so I was rummaging around in the attic the other weekend, you know, looking for something completely different, probably holiday decorations way too early. And I found this old wooden box tucked away. Didn’t even remember having it. Turns out, it was a Penny Drop game board. Looked pretty ancient, honestly, but kinda cool.
Figuring it Out
I brought it downstairs, dusted it off. No instructions, naturally. Just the board with these numbered holes (1 through 12, missing a few numbers here and there, which I learned later is part of the design!) and a little slot at the bottom. Took me a minute, but the name ‘Penny Drop’ is pretty literal, right? So, I grabbed a handful of pennies from the change jar. Seemed like the obvious first step.
I figured you probably had to, well, drop pennies into it. The goal wasn’t immediately clear. Get them in the holes? Avoid the holes? I gathered the family around, and we decided to just give it a go.
Our First Goofy Game
We decided each person gets 12 pennies to start. That felt like a good round number. We took turns standing over the board and dropping one penny at a time.
- First few drops were clumsy. Pennies bouncing everywhere.
- Then someone’s penny landed square in the ‘6’ hole. We cheered like they’d won the lottery.
- My turn, I dropped one, and it slid right into that bottom slot. “What does THAT mean?” Nobody knew. We decided for that first game, if it went in the slot, you lost the penny but didn’t score anything. Seemed fair?
- If a penny landed in a numbered hole, say ‘9’, we decided you had to pass your turn and the next player had to try and get a penny in the ‘9’ too. If they missed, they took all the pennies already sitting on the board! This added a bit of spice.
The real fun started when the board got crowded. Pennies were balancing on other pennies, leaning against the little wooden pegs. You’d drop one, hoping to nudge another into a hole, but instead, you’d cause a landslide, and suddenly you owed everyone pennies.
We figured the winner was the first person to get rid of all their 12 pennies by landing them in the numbered holes. Getting a penny in the slot meant you just lost it for good, which sometimes wasn’t a bad thing if you were trying to empty your hand!
Simple Fun, Honestly
It wasn’t complicated. No deep strategy like chess, you know? It was just simple, kinda silly fun. Hearing the clink of the pennies, the groans when someone knocked a bunch off, the cheers for a lucky drop. We ended up playing for a good hour. It’s funny how sometimes the simplest things turn out to be the most entertaining. Definitely keeping that old box downstairs now.
