In rogaining, teams with a map and compass hunt for as many checkpoints as they can in up to 24 hours. The sport was founded in Melbourne in 1976, and its odd name comes from three founders: ROd, GAIl and NEil Phillips.
📍 Kyoto (the Heian court), Japan
Kai-awase began as a pastime of Heian-period nobles in Japan. A clam shell fits only its own other half, so players hunted for matching pairs among painted shells, often showing scenes from The Tale of Genji. Later the shells graced upper-class weddings.
📍 London (Crufts at Olympia), England
Dog agility began as interval entertainment at the 1978 Crufts dog show in London, with dogs racing round a course modelled on horse show jumping. It became a proper competition at Crufts in 1980.
📍 Senegal & neighbouring West Africa
Yoté is a fast West African strategy game: players keep their pieces in hand, drop them onto the board and capture by jumping. A 1955 survey of West African games found it so popular in Senegal that French speakers there had coined a verb for playing it: "yoter".
📍 Sydney region (Georges River), Australia
Boomerang comes from an Aboriginal language of the Sydney area, written down as 'bou-mar-rang' in 1822. Yet the oldest known boomerang, carved from a mammoth tusk, was found in a cave in Poland.
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📍 Tonga
Captain Cook picked up 'taboo' in Tonga in 1777, when Tongan nobles he'd invited to dinner wouldn't eat because they were taboo: forbidden. Similar words exist across Polynesia, like Hawaiian kapu.
📍 Hilo, Hawaii
Rice, a burger patty and brown gravy, now crowned with a fried egg: loco moco was first served in 1949 at the Lincoln Grill in Hilo, Hawaii. Teen regulars named it after a friend nicknamed 'Crazy' (loco in Spanish).