the.com/jenga
a tower built on the noble lie that you'll stop pulling before it falls
means a game in which players take turns removing wooden blocks from a tower and stacking them on top until the whole thing topples.
from From the Swahili verb kujenga, "to build." The game was popularized in the 1980s by Leslie Scott, who grew up around the language in East Africa and named it with the imperative form jenga — literally "build!" — a cheerful command for a game whose true subject is collapse.
- swahili roots
- named from the Swahili word kujenga, meaning to build
- block count
- every classic set has exactly 54 wooden pieces
- record height
- stacked over 40 levels before gravity won
- inventor
- created by Leslie Scott from a family game
- physics lesson
- removing weight makes the tower stand longer, not shorter
for instance
jenga world championship — annual competitive tournament held since 1985, with players stacking wooden blocks to 40+ inches high
robert patch's original jenga — hand-carved wooden block game created in 1974 in lesotho, later commercialized by hasbro in 1983