# sey — the rules _This document is CC0. sey belongs to everyone: play it, teach it, run tournaments, write about it, build your own app for it. No permission is needed and none can be withheld._ _B-Sey℠ is one implementation of it, and that name is not free. The sport is._ --- ## What it is A circle of people, one object, and a caller who says whose turn it is — by name, before the object is sent. You score when a named person receives it. Nobody scores alone. **One completed pass is one sey.** The name is a Khmer word, and in English it happens to sound like _say_ — which fits, because a sey is **a name said and answered**: someone says yours, someone sends it, you receive it. It takes three people to make one. That is why nobody scores alone. You need something soft to throw — a sack is ideal — and **four people when one of you is calling.** See _Formats_ for the case where nobody has to. **Why three receivers.** Three is the smallest number that leaves any surprise in a call. With two, the caller can only alternate: everyone knows who is next before the name is said, and the calling stops meaning anything. That is one rule, and it produces two numbers. Whoever is calling is not receiving, so three receivers costs four people — but where a device calls, nobody sits out, and three people are three receivers. Two can practise the passing. Three is where it becomes a game, and four is where it becomes a game you can play with no equipment but a sack. ## The circle Players stand in a loose circle. One person is the **caller**, and the caller does not receive while calling — the role rotates, so nobody sits out for long. The caller says a name; whoever holds the object sends it to that person; if they receive it, that is one completed pass — one sey. The caller does not choose favourites — the whole point of the role is that turns are distributed evenly and unpredictably, so everyone stays ready and everyone gets the same number of touches. An app can guarantee this. A person should try. ### When nobody knows anyone's name yet The caller cannot say a name they have never heard. So in the first round the caller **points**, and the person pointed at says their own name before receiving. Everyone hears it, including the caller. By the second round the caller knows a few and starts saying them instead. The pointing disappears on its own — which is the whole game in miniature: the help goes away exactly as fast as it stops being needed. **The caller rotates.** This matters more than it looks: as a player you only _hear_ names, and as a caller you have to _say_ them. Both are how a circle learns a name, and saying is the harder half. ### Coming back A circle is not a new game each time. If you stop before everyone has been called, you pick up where you stopped — same circle, same order, carrying on. This matters more than it sounds. Turns are only spread evenly across a whole round, and a round that restarts every session is a round that never finishes: a group that plays for ten minutes at a time would call the same few people every time, and the people at the end of the round would never be called at all. The same names, day after day, with nothing on the surface to show it. So a caller keeping names in a hat does not tip the hat back out because the bell went. Whoever has not been called yet is still in it tomorrow. ## Formats — who does the calling A circle has one voice channel and two things that want it: the name of the next receiver, and the count. They cannot both be the headline — _"Sokha! … fourteen! … Dara! … fifteen!"_ buries the name in numerals, and the name is what the sport is for. So: **every other scoring sport calls the score. This one calls the person.** Pick one format per session. They are named rather than numbered, because the rule at the bottom of this section has to survive somebody adding a fourth. - **Relay** — the default, and the one to start with. A **player** calls, and the role rotates like any other turn. Needs **four**. If you are using an app, it tells the caller the name privately and they say it aloud, which means one borrowed phone serves a whole circle — no speaker, no signal, and nobody else needs a device. - **Call** — a **device** says the name aloud to everyone, in one voice for every name. Nobody sits out to call, so **three is enough**, and everyone is addressed the same way. This is the format for a family, or for any circle too small to spare a caller. - **Free** — **no caller at all.** Nobody is told where to pass; you play, and the count is kept for you. **A call is somebody else saying your name.** That is not a stylistic preference — it is what a call _is_. Your own name in your own voice is not an address, because an address requires another person. So where a device calls, it must never call anyone in their own recorded voice. **Free switches the fairness off, so it is never the default.** Equal turns and the cannot-pick-on-anyone property both live in the caller. Turn the caller off and people choose receivers again, and picked-last comes straight back. Play Free for fun; do not offer it to a school as the same thing, and if you are testing whether the calling works at all, a caller-on format is the only one that measures anything. ## Methods — how you send it **Hands · paddle · feet.** Pick your own; different people in one circle may use different methods. Announce it before you start. That is the whole rule. The same three choices run the other way once the game gets easy — you can narrow what you allow yourself. See _When it gets too easy_. ## Modes — what you are playing against - **Friendship** — no score at all. The point is the names. This is where everyone starts. - **Streak** — count up together. How many seys before it drops? The record belongs to the circle, never to a player. - **Team** — with a net or a line. Each side starts on a number and counts _down_; first to nothing wins. Sides may start on different numbers if they are unevenly matched. ## Levels — how much warning you get The level is how long you have between hearing your name and the object arriving. Slow, medium, fast. At the slowest level, the person called **raises a hand and says their own name** before receiving. That is how the circle learns to pronounce it — from the person it belongs to. The scaffold disappears as the circle speeds up, because by then nobody needs it. **The level belongs to the circle, never to a player.** Everyone plays at the same tempo. Nobody is measured. ## When it gets too easy Stand farther apart. When a circle has learned the names and stopped dropping the sack, the next dial is not in the app — it is the ground under you. Everyone takes a step back. Next time, another. The sack spends longer in the air, so you get a little more time to find your feet; but the aim has to be true, the face across from you is smaller, and there is far less margin for a lazy send. **The circle widens together.** Nobody is moved back for being good and nobody is pulled in for being new — the whole ring steps out, or it stays where it is. Anyone who needs to stand closer stands closer, and that is nobody's business but theirs. **Widen while you can still see a face and hear a name called.** One step past that and you are playing catch — a fine game, and not this one. The names and the faces are the whole point; when they go, so has sey. Or give something up. The second dial is what you allow yourself to send with. Most circles start with everything — hands, a paddle, feet, whatever reaches. Then they start giving things up. - **Two surfaces.** Hands and feet. Paddle and feet. - **One.** Hands only. Paddle only. Feet only. - **One side.** One hand. One paddle. One foot — and you choose which. Each rung takes something away, and taking something away is what makes you move. A circle that has stopped dropping the sack with two hands starts dropping it again with one, and everyone is a beginner again for an evening. **You narrow your own.** Announce it before play like any other method, and it holds until the game ends — a restriction is a start-line handicap, and handicaps never change in the stream. If the circle wants a harder game, the circle steps down together, and each person still chooses what they give up. **Nobody says why.** One hand is one hand, whether it is a choice for tonight or the way your body is. The sport does not ask, and the app cannot see it. ## Handicaps If sides are uneven, give one side a different starting number. Say it out loud before play begins. **Handicaps go at the start line, never in the stream.** Once play starts, nothing adjusts. A handicap is a public, ceremonial number, not a hidden correction. ## The three things sey will not do 1. **It never rates a person.** No player statistics, no rankings, no individual scores. Records are collective. 2. **You cannot pick on anyone.** Because the caller chooses receivers on both sides, hunting the weakest player is not a strategy — it is not a move. 3. **Nobody is left out.** A circle widens to admit someone. There are no captains and no picking. ## Where the name comes from _Sey_ (សី) is a Khmer circle game played at dusk — a group keeping something in the air together, for as long as they can, for no prize. This is that game with one addition: the caller says your name. A friendship often begins when someone remembers your name.