Uckers Dictionary

[Agaricus bisporus]

Does anyone in the services still play?

Can you remind those of us who have forgotten the many "technical" terms and their meanings?

I remember how to play, more or less, and am trying to coach some civvies in my local - the games are great but the banter just isnt there.

[jEtGuiDeR]

Certainly do still play,

Snakes Eyes: Double 1 on first throw and all bits out

Blob: Stack of pieces same colour

Mixi-Blob: Stack of pieces different colours

Timber Shifting: Wild accusation that you have moved a piece/pieces too many places!!

Just a few for you :O

[Toxteth O'Grady]

Suck backs

Blow backs

Six throwing b@stard

Ease on doubles, split on sixes

Freddy Facesaver

8 piece home dicking

Less flex than a Pifco travel iron

You can never have enough blobs

Know your uckers board

Too much, too soon

Mexican shuffle

The biggest mixie in the world

Tactical pigmy

:cool:

TOG

[TacLan]

Many a happy memory playing the dark blue, and ultimately beating them in the Northwood marathon uckers series of 1998. Final score RAF 37 - 34 RN. Many a long face :ok:

Nearly "8 pieced them in harbour", but they got one bit out and "steamed" it round....."Sixy throwing :mad:" nearly "Upboarded" that day. "Ludo playing ba$tards"

The unit was fully purple, and the orderly officer (A cavalry type) came in one evening and pronounced "Ah Chuckas" we wet ourselves!

Didn't play WAFU's rules but know that they had "Blow throughs" and "Suck Backs"

Haven't been to Pompey for a while, but heard that Joanna's, The RN School of Dancing had closed....RIP

[The Rocket]

Throbs - 3 Piece Blob

[6Z3]

"Licking round the end of your flue" - A variation of the blow-back requiring pretty exacting bones.

[buoy15]

If you throbbed on his knob prior to his chute (3 on 1 = 4), you controlled the whole game. Only a double 6 followed by another double 6 could allow you to "cream over" to get home, but the problem remained unless that colour decided to "break and run". This game was purely spectator sport; the players threw the dice and the onlookers called the shots.

Then one gloomy day on 206 in 1990, the new Boss appeared in the crewroom and said if we had enough time to play Uckers we must all be 'B' Cats - Demise of Uckers !

Can't mention his name, lest I get fined a bottle of port, but it is an anagram of "Barrin McLean"

CXX later devised a game called "Mexis" - mainly used on detachment - and controlled by a Chairman whose decision is final

Guarranteed to make you feel unwell

Anyone else played this?

[2port]

buoy15

..but at least "barrin" managed to keep smiling and we all had so much fun when he was there.

Oh no, my mistake.

2P

[Yeller_Gait]

..but at least "barrin" managed to keep smiling and we all had so much fun when he was there.


Well, we did on the other squadrons :D

Bring back 924 Sqn, I say

[buoy15]

Yeller

Good spot

Forgot about that, Thank you!

[Safety_Helmut]

I can remember well one of the fairies searching for the rules on the underside of the table and the new WO getting a little concerned about how seriously the game was taken.

Safety_Helmut :uhoh:

[SirPeterHardingsLovechild]

Yes, I was going to mention the 'Rule Check'

As a young lad I was never allowed to beat the crusty old Sgt as he would do a rule check if I got close to victory.

[stiknruda]

"Siffing on his donk" - ISTR meant being on the square behind the opposition, but only applied if you were equally "blobbed"!


Stik

[Tink Master]

Acey F pigs! 1 & 2 = double (double) of your choice

Basics Gents. Or did I just miss this one, blame the shiraz. Soz

[FatBaldChief]

Running Blowbacks, flying suckbacks and my own personal favourite ....... Scuttering Throbbacks.

Tried to teach some USAF types on Det many years ago. I can still see their faces when their brains reached rule overload.

Mixiblobs and Mixithrobs were short lived creatures as they were very vulnerable to sucking and blowing.

Many a game ended in a bout of extreme violence and the reason all Military brooms have very short handles! :8

[BEagle]

The wide range of local versions of the game, with and without hack scoring, added to the colourful confusion - and ensured that the 'old hands' were invariably victorious against the eager young tiggers.

I'd forgotten about short broom handles - another tradition that probably no longer exists.

The version I played most referred to 'walls' rather than 'blobs' and 'mixey-blobs' didn't exist. Also, using both 'bones' to move one 'uck' was know as 'diddly dum-ing' (running like a train). 'Lurking' was a useful tactic, but beware of the 'wall' (or 'blob') that coud lead to a 'self-hack' on your own 'donk' - a 'quad hack' score to the oppostion and both your 'ucks' back to base!

'Suckbacks' and 'blowbacks' from the 'tube' were indeed often employed, 'syphing on the donk' was another colourful term as has been said.

The best thing in my view about Uckers (apart from the associated team-building and morale raising) was that it wasn't the first team home who won, but the team with the higher hack score. So that added an extra dimension to the game and introduced even more devious tactics!

Uckers without hacks scores is merely hard Ludo!

[Roland Pulfrew]

ISTR a long standing thread on Uckers a while back. It ran to many pages and most of the (variations of) rules were covered there. :ok: IMRC it was around 98/99 so it may still be in PPRuNe Archives. A thoroughly entertaining thread and full of valuable information!

[BEagle]

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=153650&highlight=Uckers

[oldbeefer]

Seem to remember that a six and a one (known as a 'chesty yid') was referred to as 'an Alma Cogan'.

[Roland Pulfrew]

Not that one BEags, much older. It may have been lost when PPRuNe changed servers/hosts. Definately the end of the 90's.

[BEagle]

oldbeefer - we were obliged to change that term to "Chesty Yik" for obvious reasons of political correctness!

You're probably right, Roland Pulfrew - quite a lot was lost back then. Also a lot of people censored their posts and deleted their threads when an anti-PPRuNe identity investigation campaign was tried by a certain wanquerre who would have made the Stasi blush.....

[Agaricus bisporus]

Great stuff, but...Good ol' PPRuNe threadcreep!

Siffing on donks and throbbing on knobs is just the stuff I want, but what the hell do they mean??? Explanations too, please!

[BEagle]

Ah - I'm afaid it's a language more secret than that used by freemasons!

You can only learn it by being initiated into the black arts of extreme Uckers- and to do that you must join the military!

[BelixA]

Ah, Mexis.
Alot of people still talk about it, but it doesnt seem to get played much these days on dets, I think its dying out, less and less people know the rules. Maybe we should start another thread on Mexis rules.
"Arse" tends to get played a fair bit nowadays, now theres a great cardgame.
Used to play Uckers alot when i was a fairy groundy. Theres a board in the CXX crewroom but it doesnt get played very often, funny old thing when were not in the gulf we dont seem to want to sit around at work too long.

[Agaricus bisporus]

Ta Beagle. I was in the military, where else would I have learned Uckers? It was so long ago that I've forgotten most of these terms hence this post.

Perhaps I should have played more and studied less and just got myself chopped. nfff nfff

[LoeyDaFrog]

Ahh Uckers, got introduced to that as a mere lad by my cousin (Bucc mate who spent his last tours at Lossie) and since joining haven't seen that much of it. Belixa's comments may not be that far from the truth - "it doesnt get played very often, funny old thing when were not in the gulf we dont seem to want to sit around at work too long"
Can't have morale in the modern Air Farce now can we!

[rej]

We used to play in between sim slots, at lunch and during the very rare slot off, in the Instructor's crew room at CATCS, RAF Shawbury in the mid-90s. I came back from 3 years overseas and during a brief visit there in 2000 I was horrified to find out that interest in the game had allbut died.

Apparently the execs did not like the chaps and chapesses playing and it looked too bad for your career if you weren't spending 24 hours doing work, secondary duties and a bit more work followed by more secondary duties. Glad I escaped with good blobbing memories when I did.

All work and no play makes Johnny Instructor dull !!! *(Although some might say did they need any help)

[engineer(retard)]

Was almost lynched by the plumbers for burning extra dots on the bones with a soldering iron. One of them had 4 fives on for 2 weeks before it was spotted.

[SASless]

Years ago in the wilds of the Iranian desert 175 miles east of Bandar Abbas....in a gulag known as Papa Charlie....I arrived to a place with tents and one block building and no heat. Lots of spirit and spirits however. My first night I was introduced to this game call Uckers...such a polite parlor game it is too...being a US Army Warrant Officer pilot....some natural traits required for that neatly fit into the Uckers thing. The CP then extant, a former British Army Major....thought himself an Uckers player of some rank. First game on my own with him as an opponent....whipped him like I owned him....to the extent he flung the board, bits, dice, and beer bottles halfway to Bandar Abbas...questioned my parentage, birthright, and was downright rude about being whupped. I guess my sniggering about his being such a good loser did not help any! :E

Years later...introduced the game to Somalia....having an alcohol ravaged brain....needed some help on the layout of the board....thus we got onto the Brown and Root Sat Phone...called Toys-R-Us in Houston, Texas and got a store manager to pull a parchessi board out of a game and tell us the layout. The fun part was getting him to believe we were in Somalia and were serious about it. On the third call he finally decided he was not hallucinating or something and helped us out.:ok:

[Blacksheep]

A sad post fron rej and a couple of others. The army may march on its stomach, but the rest of the military march round their Uckers board. Or at least they did. With a game in progress in the crew-room, or wherever else - the strangest place I've 'specticipated' was in the Coffee Shop of a 5 Star hotel in Singers - the whole squadron, port or starboard watch or whatever is involved.

And that's the whole point of Uckers; it reinforces the comradely spirit and contributes to good morale. If Uckers has all but disappeared, no wonder you've turned into such a bunch of whingers... :E

[Oggin Aviator]

Half way through my first tour (on HMS Illustrious) during one quiet summer leave I made an Uckers board for the Wardroom. CAG colours throughout with pieces to match.

Funny old thing, the IPS was made of clear perspex painted on the underside. 1st attempt had me paint the squares on as they would appear so I was really p*ssed when I turned the board over when the paint was dry to find it back to front - d'oh :{

Anyway, swiftly made another and had it on board in time for our next deployment, which helped while away the time somewhat. Most of my recollections involve prooner Paul Mckeksdown continually winning when I played him (he was a Uckers master). Happy days.

Wonder if it is still there, we used to stow it next to the piano in the games box. It was still there in 01 when I was last on the ship, just wondered about it now.

Oggin

[BEagle]

Crewroom, what's a crewroom? I remember them about 15 years ago - but empty rooms with the odd person furtively having a quick coffee seemed to have replaced them by the time I banged out of the Mil.

People sitting around playing Uckers these days would soon be VSLJ'd by some Flt Cdr or have their professional integrity questioned in a "Haven't you got any work to do" manner.

Blacksheep - you don't know the half of it, chum....

[vecvechookattack]

Not so Beagle. It was long ago recognised that the "crewroom" was an integral part of a Naval Air Squadron and was fundamental in the training of young aircrew. Its where the old n bold guys spin their dits of daring do. In our crewroom we have a bar football game...champion !!!

[BEagle]

Clearly the transverse ambulatory folk have something to learn from the Senior Service!

Mind you, you probably wouldn't have commissioned some of the d*ckheads I suffered under.....

[SASless]

BEagle....did we share some units at some time? I thought you were a Crab....did not guess you were a Dogface?

Or do the many services have more in common than we care to admit?

[BEagle]

I most certainly was a 'Crab' - not a 'Hoo-ah!'

But I'm not beyond saying that my successors have a lot to learn from Nelson's lot in some areas!

[cumulus]

"Up Tables", AKA "Extreme Petulance", a nihilist but quite spectacular tactic to recover from imminent defeat...:ok:

[theharpoon]

when in germany some years ago myself and some fellow "workers" made a hexagonal "six board". it took a while to design and build, but even longer to play.

[Roland Pulfrew]

I remember a game being played in the crewroom of the premier maritime sqn at ISK back in the 80s. Started around 1000 and was still going strong when I had to leave for the sim (1300) so I handed over to another co-pilot. Returned from the sim at 1600 to find same game still going (playing for hacks as BEagle says adds a much better dimension) to find only one of the original players still in the game:) Sad to see the tradition dying out - it really was a good team building morale inducing sport!:uhoh:

[BEagle]

On a ULAS black flag day when the Queen's Thundermunks were grounded by lashing rain and low cloud, we held an epic Uckers game which lasted for around the same length of time as the one to which Roland refers.....

Winners and losers were still in a merry frame of mind hours later - excellent for morale and team building!

An ex-Kipper fleet Wg Cdr and I were the only 2 on our MER course at Arthur Scargill International in the early '80s; one day he decided that we would take on the AFT studes at Uckers..... But the staff QFIs had other thoughts and sniffily handed out a quiz to the studes including such pointless questions as how fast the trees at Auckland airport grow. (It was in the Planning Doc!).

What a bunch of fun-detecting old miseries. Particularly the one to whom I was allocated - we nicknamed him 'Uncle Chuckles'.