This is an outdoor game for younger children and one I remember playing at birthday parties in the UK, in the late 50′s and early 60′s (when I was but a child!). The game is a popular variation of ‘Tag’ and involves what all kids seem to enjoy, chasing down and ‘capturing’ each other.
The game What time is it Mr. Wolf? is played as follows:-
One person from the party plays the wolf and she (or he) stands about twenty yards from the others, who begin at their ‘base’.
The group asks the person playing the wolf ” What’s the time, Mr. Wolf?”, to which she or he replies two o’clock (or some other o’clock time) on hearing this type of answer the group advances as many paces as the ‘o’clock time (e.g. two o’clock is two paces). At some point in the game, when the group is quite near the person playing the wolf, the wolf will reply “Dinner time!” and then try to tag one of the group “for dinner”. The group has to run back to “base” before being tagged. The person tagged then becomes the wolf and the game continues.
Other variations of Tag, that are similar, can involve teams forming to chase down the group that “escapes”. This game involves two bases, at each end of a small area, about twenty yards apart. One person starts off in the middles and tries to “Tag” the others who run from one base to another. When a person is Tagged they join the person trying to Tag the others. The game continues until all the players have been ‘Tagged”.
There are other variations were the people trying to Tag join hands, but the basic game is the same and for centuries these type of ‘Tag’ games have always amused young children at play.