“DUCK, DUCK, GRAY GOOSE.” Annalisa sent me this article by Heather Brown about how the game of “Duck, Duck, Goose” is played in Minnesota. The game was one of my favorites in first and second grade. The players sit in a circle on the floor, and the player who is “It” runs around the outside of the circle, tagging each player and saying “duck” with each tag until “It” says “goose” while making the tag. Then the player who is tagged as “Goose” gets up and runs after “It”. If “Goose” can make the tag before “It” gets back to where “Goose” had been sitting, then”Goose” gets to be “It”. (The game turns out to be difficult to explain,)
In Minnesota, there are two forms of the game. Some people have the player who is “It” say “Gray Goose” rather than “Goose”. Research shows that Minnesota is the only state where anybody says “Gray Goose”. Why is this so?
There are two versions of the game that come from Sweden. One is called in Swedish “Anka Anka Gås,” which translates into “Duck, Duck, Goose.” Another is “Anka Anka Grå Anka,” which translates into “Duck, Duck, Gray Duck.” The theory is that the Swedes with the latter version emigrated to Minnesota.