Farkle Sparkle

Our friend Jerry sparkles all the time, but especially when he plays Farkle, a dice game of little skill and lots of luck and laughter.

We are new to Farkle, but apparently the game's been around a long time. Remembering a story about its inventor, Sir Albert Farkle, as I recall, I imagine that Sir Farkle and the Earl of Sandwich were good friends. I went to the innernets (not a typo; a favorite Bushism) to learn about Sir Farkle. Alas, I couldn't find him, as there seem to be many stories of inventors.

From Wikipedia--an excellent news source irregardless of what teachers might say--has also been called or is similar to Cosmic Wimpout, Squelch or Zonk, among other names.

My favorite farkle site, http://www.officialfarklerules.com/, tells this history:

Farkle goes back a long way and it would take a few pages to relate the whole history, so we will try to sum it up in one sentence. Back in the Early 13^th Century, after having many daughters, Sir Anthony XVIII of Wasack finally had a son, but Sir Anthony begrudged the tradition of naming sons after their fathers, (after all he was the 18^th in a long line of Anthony’s of Wasack) so he decided to break the tradition, but he couldn’t think of a suitable name for his new son so his son went nameless for about a year when, while playing with his favorite toy, a set of wooden dice, he spoke his first word, which was the word "farkle", and in commemoration of this great event, Sir Anthony the XVIII of Wasack, decided to give his son this unique name while he was on the earth, speaking of earth, that is where Dacy and Amy found the ancient manuscript with the official rules of the unique game of Farkle, which was the game that Sir Farkle I of Wasack invented. (Some sentence!)

The site adds rules, including this instruction: Anywhere between 2 and 86 players may play in one game. Anymore than that, and it’s just way to long before you get to roll the dice again, let alone the size of the room you’d need.

We play with six people. It's a good number.

Another rule from the official rules site that I like says that player must get 10,000 points recorded on the scratch paper for a normal game or 8,435,042 points recorded if it’s going to be a really long night.

Jim Spinarkle, who played basketball for Duke way back in the day before Duke was a basketball powerhouse, sparkled when his pigeon-toed cute self played basketball. I've seen his older self as a sportscaster. I wonder if his older self plays Farkle now. If so, I'll bet he sparkles when he plays Farkle, too: Spinarkle Farkle Sparkle. Say that three times fast.