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This is all new to me, as is the show, and I happen to catch the end of "A Way with Words" on 1/27/08-and the discussion was about childhood games and why duck, duck, gray duck was a MN thing- I am from southern MN, now living in WI, and I get asked this question all the time. When we played it, we would go around the circle, and you would give each person a color, ie- brown duck, blue duck, green duck, and then the person you wanted to be it was gray duck. That is where I believe the color- gray duck came into play. That was 20 years ago that I played that.
I was quite surprised to hear about "duck duck goose" because when I played it over 40 years ago in North Hollywood, CA, we played "white duck, white duck, yellow duck". Is there ANYONE out there who ever played with white and yellow ducks, or is it just the gray ones from Minnesota? Fascinating stuff.
There's more about the game in this discussion.
I, too, grew up in southern MN and am now living in WI, but I don't remember ever playing the multi-colored version. I do remember using both "gray duck" (or "grey duck," depending on your preferred spelling) and "goose."
Perhaps it was because I grew up on the Mississippi River, just across from WI, but I was also used to hearing & using other regional terms interchangeably, like "soda," "pop," & "soda pop" (but never "coke," unless it was an actual Coca-Cola), as well as "fountain" & "bubbler."
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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