Paper Chase (game)
Encyclopedia
Paper Chase is a racing game played outdoors (best played within a wood or even a shrubbery maze) with any number of players. At the start of the game, one person is designated the 'hare
Hare
Hares and jackrabbits are leporids belonging to the genus Lepus. Hares less than one year old are called leverets. Four species commonly known as types of hare are classified outside of Lepus: the hispid hare , and three species known as red rock hares .Hares are very fast-moving...

' and everyone else in the group are the 'hounds'. The 'hare' starts off ahead of everyone else leaving behind themselves a trail of paper shreds (or chalk marks in an urban environment) which represents the scent of the hare. Just as scent is carried on the wind, so too are the bits of paper, sometimes making for a difficult game. After some designated time, the hounds must chase after the hare and attempt to catch them before they reach the ending point of the race. It is generally done over a long distance, but shorter courses can be set. If the hare makes it to the finish line, they get to choose the next hare, or to be the hare themselves. Similarly, the person who catches the hare gets to choose the next hare.

Hare and Hounds was a sport popular in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....

  in early Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 times and references to ‘hares’ in modern hashing
Hash House Harriers
The Hash House Harriers is an international group of non-competitive running, social and drinking clubs...

 are a survival from those days. Cross country running following a trail of paper scraps was a major sport in public schools
Public School (UK)
A public school, in common British usage, is a school that is neither administered nor financed by the state or from taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of endowments, tuition fees and charitable contributions, usually existing as a non profit-making charitable trust...

 before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. A number of running clubs' names reflect this, for example Thames Hare and Hounds
Thames Hare and Hounds
Thames Hare and Hounds is the oldest cross-country running club in the world, based on the Roehampton end of Wimbledon Common, adjacent to Richmond Park, and draws runners from across south-west London...

.

Literary & cinema references

Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes
Thomas Hughes
Thomas Hughes was an English lawyer and author. He is most famous for his novel Tom Brown's Schooldays , a semi-autobiographical work set at Rugby School, which Hughes had attended. It had a lesser-known sequel, Tom Brown at Oxford .- Biography :Hughes was the second son of John Hughes, editor of...

 published in 1857 depicted a meet by the Big-Side Hare and Hounds. Students busily tore up old newspapers copybooks and magazines into small pieces to fill four large bags with the paper ‘scent’. Forty or fifty boys gathered and two good runners were chosen as hares who carried the bags and started across the fields laying the trail. When scent (paper) was located the member of the pack calls "Forward!" - hashers now call “ON! ON!”. Members of the pack worked together finding scent and straining to keep up.

In the book The Railway Children
The Railway Children
The Railway Children is a children's book by Edith Nesbit, originally serialised in The London Magazine during 1905 and first published in book form in 1906...

,
written by Edith Nesbit in 1906, the children observe a game of paper chase. The book was made into a television series 4 times and into a movie twice, the most recent of which was in 2000.

In the novel Daddy Long Legs
Daddy-Long-Legs (novel)
Daddy Long-Legs is a 1912 epistolary novel by the American writer Jean Webster. It follows the protagonist, a young girl named Jerusha "Judy" Abbott, through her college years. She writes the letters to her benefactor, a rich man whom she has never seen....

,
written in 1912 by Jean Webster, the girls play a game of paper chase where the hares cheat: they leave a paper trail which indicates they passed through a building and got out of the window, while they actually went around the house.

In the 1946 Orson Welles movie, The Stranger
The Stranger (1946 film)
The Stranger is an American film noir directed by Orson Welles and starring Welles, Edward G. Robinson, and Loretta Young. The film was based on an Oscar-nominated screenplay written by Victor Trivas. Sam Spiegel was the film's producer, and the film's musical score is by Bronisław Kaper...

,
Rankin's students are in the midst of a paper chase through the woods as Rankin kills his former colleague. Rankin mis-directs the "hounds" to keep them from finding the body by moving the shreds of paper.

In the 1954 memoir by Vyvyan Holland, Son of Oscar Wilde, he describes playing paper chase at Neuenheim College in Heidelberg, Germany in 1896. "[W]hen the river was frozen and the snow lay thick upon the ground, so that it was impossible either to row or to play football, paper chases were organized by the master in charge of games. No form of exercise is quite so utterly pointless and boring as a paper chase, and we used to try to slink off and get lost and find our way home by ourselves; though this, if discovered, was apt to lead to a painful interview with the games master."

In the 1975 Disney movie, One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing
One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing
One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing is a 1975 British comedy film, which is set in the early 1920s, about the theft of a dinosaur skeleton from the Natural History Museum. The film was produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution Company. The title is a parody of the...

,
the nannies notice a trail of paper scraps on the ground while trying to hide a dinosaur skeleton in a wood. They remark that it must be a a paper chase at which point a group of school boys crash through the wood following the trail.
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