''Hi Ho! Cherry-O'' is a children's put and take

board game A board game is a type of tabletop game that involves small objects () that are placed and moved in particular ways on a specially designed patterned game board, potentially including other components, e.g. dice. The earliest known uses of the ...

currently published by

Hasbro Hasbro, Inc. (; a syllabic abbreviation of its original name, Hassenfeld Brothers) is an American multinational corporation, multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment holding company founded on December 6, 1923 by Henry, Hillel and Herma ...

in which two to four players spin a spinner in an attempt to collect cherries. The original edition, designed by Hermann Wernhard and first published in 1960 by Whitman Publishers, had players compete to collect 10 cherries. In 1987, there was a video cassette version, made by Golden Book Video in the hi-ho video line, this involved a character, farmer Bing, asking for your help to collect cherries. During an update in 2007, the rules were updated to include a cooperative play variant, where players cooperate to remove all fruit from the board before a bird puzzle is completed. In 2015, Winning Moves Games USA published a classic edition.

Gameplay

Each player starts the game with an empty basket and 10 cherries on their tree. Players take turns spinning the spinner and performing the indicated action. The spinner is divided into seven sections: #Take one cherry off of the tree. #Take two cherries off of the tree. #Take three cherries off of the tree. #Take four cherries off of the tree. #Dog: Replace cherries on the tree: two if the player has at least that many, or one if they have only one. If the player's bucket is empty, this space has no effect. #Bird: Same effect as the dog. #Spilled basket: Return all cherries to the tree. If the player's bucket is empty, this space has no effect. The first player to collect all the cherries from their tree and call "Hi Ho! Cherry-O" wins the game.

Analysis

The game length for a single player can be determined using a

Markov chain In probability theory and statistics, a Markov chain or Markov process is a stochastic process describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event. Informally ...

, yielding the following results:. *Minimum game length: 3 *Average game length: 15.8 (Exact: 494813746 / 31313403) *Maximum game length: Unbounded *25th percentile: 7 moves *50th percentile (median): 12 moves *75th percentile: 21 moves *95th percentile: 40 moves The game length for multiple players depends on the number of players as they all compete who would be first to finish. The average number of rounds for 2,3,4 players until someone wins is 9.6, 7.5, 6.4; with median number of rounds being 8, 6, 6. That is, for 2 players half the time it will take 8 rounds or less for someone to win, with average number of rounds being 9.6.

References

External links

Hasbro's Hi Ho! Cherry-O product page

Hi Ho! Cherry-O at BoardGameGeek
Includes many pictures of various game editions. Board games introduced in 1960 Milton Bradley Company games Children's board games {{Board-game-stub