Sometimes, we all like to have clean clothes. Unfortunately, though, in most apartment situations, washers and dryers cost money, quarters to be exact. So how do you get clean clothes while possibly unmercifully robbing your friends of their quarters and thus leaving them smelly? It’s easy! Invite your friends over for a game of Chuck-a-Luck.

Chuck-a-Luck, also called Birdcage and Sweat-Cloth, is a simple gambling game of chance that originated in medieval times, and was actually very popular in the Civil War, because soldiers could easily entertain themselves by making dice out of small wooden blocks and playing for change.

So, all you need to play is a couple of friends, three dice, a roll of quarters for each person and a pen and paper (civil war and medivel costumes optional). First, everybody halves his or her roll of quarters. A roll of quarters is 40 quarters, so everybody keeps 20 from their roll and puts 20 in the “bank.” Oh yeah, someone has to be the banker, but I’ll explain that more later.

Next, draw a board that is a tic-tac-toe-ish diagram with the numbers 1-6 that looks like this:

Note: it may help to draw the board bigger if you have a large amount of people playing.

So, someone rolls the dice (how you determine who starts doesn’t matter) and a combination of numbers come up. But before the dice are rolled, each player makes bets on the board of which numbers they think are going to come up. You can bet all of your money on one number, you can bet one quarter on only one number, you can bet a few quarters on a few numbers, it doesn’t matter at all. This is a game of chance, so there is no real way of knowing which numbers are going to come up, you just have to either go with a gut feeling or place safe bets.

Once the dice is rolled and the numbers are revealed, it is time to see who collects money from the bank and who doesn’t. For example, say you bet two quarters on 4, one quarter on 1, and three quarters on 6 and the dice roll the numbers 5, 4, and 2. Since you didn’t bet on 5 or 2, the banker collects your quarters and adds it to the bank’s stockpile. But, since you did bet two quarters on 4, you get back two quarters from the bank, and you get to keep the quarters you originally placed on that number. So, you come up two quarters short because you had four quarters taken away (one on losing 1 and three on losing 6), and you gained two quarters from winning 4.

There are also scenarios called doubles triples. Say you bet two quarters on 4 and all three dice rolled a 4, you would get six quarters; likewise, if two dice rolled a 4, you would get four quarters. Lastly, whoever rolls the dice first keeps rolling until they loose and don’t win anything, then the next person rolls.

After a long workweek with an overflowing laundry basket of dirty, stank-ass clothes, Chuck-a-Luck is a great, inexpensive way to get friends together to see who will reap and who will reek! – Raeann Drew

The 2-Do List is a monthly column that features fun, cheap games to keep you and your friends (if you have them) entertained.

Ran out of things to do on your to-do list and now your bored out of your gourd? Try these cheap, fun and entertaining game ideas brought to you by Lyke Mag.

Let’s say you’re snowed in, completely broke, and bored out of your mind. Sound familiar? I thought so. Lyke Mag has an easy game for you to play; it’s called “Crack-a-gories. It’s like the game Scattergories (which runs for 20 bucks on Amazon), just the cracked, do-it-at-home version (which runs for about 99 cents). What you do is this: first get a couple sheets of paper (as many as there are players and two extra), pens and surfaces to write on. On a piece of paper, everybody comes up with a list “categories.” For example, when my girlfriend and I played, two we used were “movie quotes” and “sex positions.” It can be anything, and you can come up with as many as you want! We came up with twenty-six, but you could easily do short rounds of five or so (just make sure everyone writes them down, it’s helpful to number them). Once you’ve written down all the categories questions you want, get another sheet of paper. This is the tricky part. In Scattergories, there is a crazy 26-sided die that you roll and the letter you are going to use comes up. There is no crazy 26-sided die in Crack-a-gories. What you do is, just have one player run through the alphabet in their mind at whatever pace. The other player says, “stop” and whatever letter the first player was on, that’s the one you use!

After your letter is selected, you choose a time to have all the category questions answered by. My girlfriend insisted that we didn’t have a time limit, but it’s all up to you. You can do a super competitive, insane 5-minute time limit, or you can treasure the opportunity to come up with really good answers by allowing a longer time limit. My suggestion is to give about a minute for each question (it’ll go by a lot faster than you think!).

While the clock is ticking, everyone jots down their answers based on the letter. For example, our letter was “L,” so I used the quote “Let Mama have him!” from one of my favorite movies, “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.” (Fans of this movie will remember that line as the S&M leather-clad mother burst in on Ash Tray and her daughter getting their freak on, after she came home early from church and could “smell the sex in the air.”) As for sexual positions, we decided that we were going to allow made-up answers as long as they were really funny, so I created the position “The Limbo,” (which I’m sure probably really exists somewhere out there).

Lastly, after the time is up (you may want to set an alarm), everybody counts their points. One point for every one-word answer, two points for two words, three points for three words and so on. For example, in my game, Lisa Left-Eye Lopez would have scored me three points if we had a singer category. Obviously, whoever has the most points wins!

Now go get ‘em! Just don’t be trying to steal my movie quote and sexual position – well, at least not in the game, anyway. -RD & Jenny Dugger