Punta e cul is a typical Easter game in Urbania in Northern Le Marche. People gather in the main square in front of the theatre on Easter morning and Ester Monday morning. You’re given an egg and you have to smash your neighbour’s egg and take home all the eggs that you can break (hard boiled, of course!)The eggs are arranged on the ground in the shape of an “S”, calculating 2 eggs per participant. Then follows the “conta” to decide who is to begin, the lucky one chooses the first egg on the right or left of the line, carefully evaluating the strength of the egg ;) . The other competitors pick the following eggs. Now the competition starts, each person has to beat the tip of his neighbour’s egg with the tip of his own egg, the winner is the person who manages to keep his egg intact. The player continues as long as his egg remains intact and pockets all those he has broken. The game proceeds with the next competitor and so on.At the end some competitors play again beating the other end of the egg, still intact, the bottom (cul): hence the name of the game punta e cul (tip and bottom).
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Reminds me of a game we used to play in Athens at Easter: all the eggs were dyed red and one of them was wooden, so it always won and you weren’t supposed to be able to tell which was made of wood. In fact the whorls on the wood showed through the paint and gave it away.
Thank you for the nice story Alys!
Someone told me that something similar is also played in Slovenia.
No wooden eggs here… but apparently everyone has a theory about the way to choose the “best” egg and the way to hold it so that it wouldn’t break!