Epic Win: Black Top Four Square
Submitted and Written by Ali K
Black top four square!! Ultimate recess game. Simple yet endlessly entertaining, all that was needed was chalk, a rubber ball, and some kids. When the ball is bounced into your square you must then bounce it back out without hitting twice in your own square, otherwise you are out. Every time a player gets out, the rest rotate and an alternate enters. The goal was to become and maintain the position of King for the duration of recess. Incorporating cool moves was the best, including but not limited to; bouncing the ball sky high with a “baby bomb”; bouncing the ball unexpectedly low to the ground for a “midget”; through the legs like “Michael Jordan”; and anything else our young minds could come up with. Where playground ended and asphalt began, the game of four square was there.
HOTLINKING FAIL
oh man, did everyone else have dozens of crazy rules? Like, black-magic, brown-magic, even green-magic? (I think that was when you sat on it like a frog…) I could never keep them straight. But I played this game ALL THE TIME as a kid.
We obviously had different rules than you, but we had some crazy rules. And the person in the “king” spot got to pick the rules. Usually it was to pick certain “special moves” and outlaw them, so if you used that special move, you were out.
We played it backwards – all special moves were off-limits unless the person in the king spot said otherwise. Spinnies, spikes, whatever.
“Russel’s rules, overhands, backstops and no ruffies”
i had black magic, tree-top slam, gotchas, windmills(spin it while you return it), five-second-hold, poison(server calls poison and throws it at someone if it hits, they are out, but if they dodge, the server is out), friendships(one person cant get the other out and vice-versa) war(one person calls war with the other, and all other powers are nullified and they will get out if they pass it to a different square, until the server calls war-over or someone gets out)
ya the server had all of the privilages
We had a variation of the game where you had to call out movie titles, colors, etc. on your bounce with no repeats. You could get out for repeating or failing to say one as much as missing a bounce.
US, TOO. Colors always was interesting because, as elementary-school (and sometimes middle-school, I won’t lie) kids, we had a somewhat limited knowledge of all the different colors besides what Crayola and the color wheel taught us. We’d often get into varying degrees of opacity, such as “transparent” or “invisible” or something. Of course, as the game went on and we started running out of colors, we were allowed to popcorn (which meant something entirely different when reading aloud. 4-square popcorn was just bouncing, but not holding, the ball in your hands.)
Hehehe. My dream was always to play 4-Square in the four corners (New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona).
That would be awesome!!
We actually played 4-square multiple times in college! We’d just use the sidewalk where 4 sections met. Oh the memories!
I remember playing popcorn more than actual four square, or with the movie rule. Same pavement, same red rubber ball. You pass the ball, throw it into the air then clap n times before you catch it. The person next to you has to clap n + 1 times before they catch it or they’re out. We incorporated part of the “helicopter helicopter” game into it, too, when our outfits were colorful enough. You could only pass to someone who had the same color on as you, or we’d have special rules for colors (If you were passing to someone with red you had to do it one handed, you had to hop on one foot to pass to yellow or if you were wearing X you had to do Y). Damn games were complicated.
I think the popcorn transition was more an adaptation to the condition of the rubber balls we could get and our rising heights destroying the monkey bars. In earlier years, kickball was all the rage. Then teachers decided we were adult enough to have control of the air compressor to fill the balls back up when they went flat. That went as well as expected, and about every ball the younger kids could get turned into eggs.
Popcorn? Our version of Popcorn was played on a trampoline. Some kids layed down and the others jumped around them, makeing them “pop” up like popcorn……..
I’m not sure what the point of that game was.
THAT was some sweet shat thar!!!
In the eighth grade, EVERYBODY played four-square, and EVERYBODY liked it! It was the only time during recess where nobody was special, everybody was equal, and there was no hate…although there were some bumps and bruises!
Even the special ed kids joined in and were very welcome in the game!
Never heard of it. Never played it.
Same here.
We alwayes played kickball.
Some of our games were plain stupid, popcorn, mailman, bus stop, cherry bomb, Donald Duck, the whole business with lock, unlock, no locks lock, (what was that even for???)… in elementary school the “right”, normal way described here was “old skool”.
Anyone else “name” the corners? Like 1. was King, then Queen, then Joker, then TOILET. Toilet was CORNER OF SHAME!!!! But I guess we were lucky in some way, we didn’t have to re-draw the squares. They were painted on the blacktop.
This was awesome. Period.
No, bouncing the ball sky high was called a CHERRY BOMB! (And most of the time, we called no cherry bombs- we were short back then….)
I think we only had one year where this game won out over Wallball and we played it like crazy.
Hell, yeah, I remember Cherry bombs! There was this little group of kids that I played with, I swear our rules for four square made the US Tax Code look concise, LOL.
Then there were the endless debates on whether or not balls on the lines BETWEEN the squares were in or out…
When we bounced it really high we’d yell TREEEEETOP! Then all the pussies would be like omg no treetops. Also we did ‘electric twists’ (or something like that, i know it had electricity in the name) which was just spinning the ball loads.
In Australia this was/is played with a tennis ball and known as “handball”. Greatest schoolyard game EVER (except maybe bullrush, which was banned for being violent).
That sounds like Red Rover…
Red rover red rover send *littlest kid in the other line* right over!
Sooo go banned after a big kid dislocated a smallerkids arm. o0
I’m Australian too, and we called it four-square (or two-square). Handball was up against a wall. Tennis ball or basketball.
The four corners were King, Queen, Jack and Joker and we had them painted on the asphalt too. The King square had a square in the corner you had to serve from.
Our special moves (one use per game) included double-touch, kick and lollipop, which was hitting it back on the lob without touching in your square. Our primary school principal had to intervene when the boys started doing power slams (cherry bombs as you guys called them) into girls’ squares which was soon banned.
We brought it back in Year 12 for nostalgic win!
Another Aussie here. We called the squares King, Queen, Jack and Dunce. And we had foot lobs, head lobs and body lobs. And the spoon slam. Not a move in the game but there was always some hothead that would throw a spoon to the ground whenever he got out. (This happened at more than one school.) Ah, good times.
We always referrred to the squares Ace>King>Queen>Jack>Dunce (depending on number of squares). This game is notable in that I gave and received my first punch to the face in a dispute over whether or not I was out.
Aother aussie here, we use to play this all the time in year 10, at one point we had 8 squares all together and have 5 or 6 ppl lined up on the side ready to jump in if the “lowest” square go out. best game ever. Also the tennis ball is a must
Dang, I loved playing four square. I’m going to have to make some friends play with me sometime soon. We also had names for two of the spots in the square, King/Queen and Toilet, heh. My favorite of the powers is the Kingie/Queenie D.O. with which you could call a do-over at any time for any reason at your discretion.
Oh man, we used to play that here in Sweden too. We simply called it “King” though, and we always used a tennis ball (preferably without all that green fuzzy stuff on it). I was pretty damn good at it I must say.
With us, Four-Square was a girl’s game; boys played Dodge Ball.
I never heard of this one.
This sounds remarkably like handball. Not the crazy official handball, but four squares and a tennis ball, a raging favourite pasttime for boys in my Australian high school…
at my summer day camp we had like 10 spaces on a road just for 4 square! we would get there and run to play. we had some headed games back in the day. you could get someone out by hitting thier feet it was called a raspberrie! haha!
Yes, yes, yes!! My family still plays 4-square when we get together, and we’re all, um, of a certain age. LOL!!!
Never played 4-square; we played kickball, marbles, and tag. First time I heard of it was when I was 19 and working at a Summer Camp, only it had been adjusted for larger groups: 9-square! The King stays in the middle square (until deposed) and the line formed at one of the corners. Once someone was out, everyone advanced in a spiral toward the center.
Me and my friends always played four square as a tag game.
Rules:
1 person (‘it’) stood in the middle.
Every one else ran around standing to the little corners drawn there
LOL. We played it so weird. Sometimes we’d get, like, 10 or more people playing.
We played it in college with tennis balls. Of course, having college senses of humor, we either played it with 6 squares and called it “sechs” or four squares and called it “four play.” Super-fast play, anything goes … great fun while waiting in lines on the sidewalk. We’d play for hours.
I remember four-square! We had “cherry bombs”, and “shoe-shiners” and “white magic” (everyone goes to the middle, if ur not there, you lose) and “black magic” (something you could call if they don’t let it bounce in your square.) I never seemed to be the leader for longer than 1 round.. ^^”
Four-square was awesome.
This past year our choir teacher made a square out of duct tape on the floor and we played after our final concert was over. Funfunfun. 
god, i love four square. i still play it. some friends and i even brought the game inside. if we find a big enough room, we put down tape for the squares and play it just like if we were outside. people who have watched us play this often tell us that we’re more intense than most football games.
This was in our playground when I was a kid but no one ever knew what you were supposed to do, so it went unused.
Aw man, I miss four square. This was my favorite game.
We had the “mailman” move, where you hold on to the ball and run around all the four squares on the outside, then you unexpectedly slam it down in a random person’s square. But these were usually outlawed, and we spent the first minute of every match deciding what we could and couldn’t do.
Cherry bombs for us were dropping the ball really low, and spikes were bouncing it as hard as possible.
“Bubbling” was bouncing the ball up and down in your hands, it wasn’t considered holding and it gave the person more time to create suspense/show off.
I think we had the King and Queen squares, but I don’t know what the other 2 were.
I loved playing in a small group with my friends, but I hated when our gym teacher would make everyone play and assign you a group. The teacher had rules such as no bombing the ball, but the self proclaimed “cool kids” would break them anyway. It also didn’t matter if they hit the line or outside of the box, they called whatever would keep them in the game. The teacher didn’t care what they did. It’s so weird when teachers choose side between “popular” and “normal” kids.
Epic WIN! Yes, loved this game. And if your shoe was untied mid-game you could call “frozen square” and they’d play while you tied it, until you said “unfrozen”. Game On!
We had permanent 4-square areas painted on our playground’s blacktop, as well as 2-square and 6-square. In fact I think they’re still there, 20 years later. Our playground rocked. I don’t remember the rules so much, but I do remember it being a great equalizer; kids played 4-square together who otherwise wouldn’t play together at all.
Four square almost tore apart the entire 5th grade at our school. We got into so many fights over the stupid made-up rules (how many rules the king was allowed to change, what was considered a cherry bomb). One time the king banned all girls from playing, and a dedicated group of girl-likers spent the entire recess trying to get that one king out (we didn’t). He eventually got yelled at by the teacher when he threatened to fight this kid who disputed his divine wisdom (“It was so on the line!” “No, it was out, dumbface!”) This is epic nostalgia right here.
they still play this in the schools of my hometown
I remember four square as the earliest game where the girls could be snippy at each other.
We did things like cherry bombs and whatnot. But the worst rule was when you weren’t allowed into the square, but had to stay on the lines at all times. You could move freely, just only on the lines. That rule was horrid. We also added rules from stick in the mud, so others couldn’t move. As well as popcorn, and the movie game. Except we had to spell it out as fast as we could the first time, and then try and one up each other. But cherry bombs were the worst, I got hit in the head so many times.
we always called the “baby bomb” a “cherry bomb”… I always sucked at four square. ^^;
I used to dominate the four square court! even the most athletic kids at my elementary school couldn’t beat me!
We had a much smaller square, used a basketball, and never allowed overhands.
Yes, it definitely had to be underhand. They had torn out all of the seats in the auditorium at my elementary school, so we would play it indoors during the winter. It helped to be uphill. Then the year after we moved on they tore it down and put up a medical building. That sucked.
We had cool moves in middle school too: “the Buzzsaw” – chop the ball so it spins the other way and rebounds at an odd angle; if you got out as a result of your own Buzzsaw, it was a “Buzzkill”; the “Bump” – hit the ball with the palm of our fist. The ball should head toward the chest of the person opposite you
i used to play this in summer camp with this big soft ball.. loved this game!
We had this rule where if someone said ‘tea party’ as they hit it to you you could only hit it back to them and vice versa until they said ‘no tea’. Weird, but it was they easy way to get the pussies out.
That was the most epic thing back in 4th grade xD
In New Zealand we played pretty much like you Aussies and with a mini basket ball. I used mine so much that buy the end of the first year at middle school it had worn through the rubber to the twine stuff underneath. I Think the game kind of evolved on the playground as we got better at it, adding more rules and even playing up to 8 squares to cut down on ins and outs lines
I remember that at my school we would call the lowest one the a$$ i don’t know why, but it was always funny XD
I am in 8th grade and we still play it. We use wars, gotchas (catch the ball and the person who hit it is out, but the most common rules are Double touch double bounce overhands and slams.