The Passglas...
Precision measure for drinking games
My relentless research in the field of goblets and challenges led me to wonder whether there might be some special type of goblet used in drinking games. I turned as usual to the sacred oracle, the source of all wisdom in the universe, for guidance. And what Google told me, after a fashion, was that such goblets do indeed exist. In fact, depending on one’s willingness to stretch the definition of goblet, which in my case is boundless, there may be several very different sorts of goblets that figure in drinking games.
For example, there’s a dice game played in Bolivia called Alalay. It’s quite similar to Yahtzee, in that it involves rolling five dice, with scoring based on the values of various number combinations. As in Yahtzee, the dice are placed in a small container and shaken before being thrown. In Alalay, this container, which is made of stiff leather, is called a goblet. Alalay is sometimes played as a drinking game, though the goblet is never used for alcohol; it wouldn’t do to get the dice wet.
But there was an even closer and more literal match for drinking-game-related goblets: something called a passglas (sometimes spelled pasglas), which etymologically sophisticated readers will recognize as meaning “pass glass.” A passglas is a tall, six- or eight-sided glass marked with rings or bands at regular intervals. This design was popular in Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, and Sweden during the 16th through 18th centuries. The glass was filled with beer (or, depending on the locale and the desired depth of inebriation, schnapps). The first participant drinks down to the first mark and passes it on, but if he—naturally, it would be a “he”—drinks too much and the liquid level drops below the line, he is obligated to drink all the way to the next line.
Seventeenth-century Dutch artist Adriaen van Ostade specialized in paintings and sketches involving peasants, drinking, and drinking peasants. One of his more obscure paintings, called Het dansende paar (“The Dancing Couple”), ca. 1680-1685, shows a man drinking from a passglas while the next drinker eagerly waits his turn. Nowadays passglases are sold as antiques or found in museums, and are little known outside the parts of Europe where they were once popular. Modern drinking games may be more sophisticated, but they rarely match the simple elegance the passglas provided.
I just happen to have a collection of about 60 shot glasses and a few goblets and happened upon on of those Passglas'ss at a flea market last week. Just found it to be interesting as well as fun. Specially seeing if you can drink from one line to the other.
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