Stand in a loose circle. You need something soft to throw — a beanbag, a rolled sock, a sack — and four people when one of you is calling. One person is the caller, and the caller does not receive while calling. The role rotates, so nobody sits out for long. 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 makes 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 nothing but a sack.
- The caller says a name out loud.
- Whoever is holding the sack sends it to that person.
- If they receive it, that is one completed pass. 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.
That is the whole game. Everything after this is a way of playing it better.
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 ever hear names. As the caller you have to say them — and saying is the harder half of learning a name. Take turns.
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.
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.
Choose 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. In Relay a player calls and the role rotates, which needs four of you. In Call a device says the name aloud to everyone, so nobody sits out and three is enough. In Free there is no caller at all. They are named rather than numbered, because the two rules below have 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. With an app, it tells the caller the name privately and they say it aloud — so one borrowed phone serves a whole circle.
- 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 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 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.
Choose how you send it
Hands, a paddle, or feet. Different people in one circle may use different methods — say which before you start, and that is the whole rule. It is how a grandparent and a nine-year-old end up in the same game.
The same three choices run the other way once the game gets easy: you can narrow what you allow yourself. That is the second dial below.
Choose what you are playing against
- Friendship — no score at all. The point is the names. Start here.
- 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. Uneven sides start on different numbers.
Choose how much warning you get
The level is how long you have between hearing your name and the sack 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 help disappears as the circle speeds up, because by then nobody needs it.
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 go at the start line, never in the stream
If sides are uneven, give one side a different starting number and say it out loud before play begins. Once play starts, nothing adjusts. A handicap is a public, ceremonial number — not a hidden correction.
The three things sey will not do
These are not house rules. They are the reason the game works, and any app or league built on sey should keep them.
It never rates a person
No player statistics, no rankings, no individual scores. Records are collective — our park's record is 87, never your average.
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. Skill goes entirely into delivering well.
Nobody is left out
A circle widens to admit someone. There are no captains and no picking, and wherever there is a caller, everyone touches the sack the same number of times.
Tonsay teaches sey
" closes the comment early and the remaining lines render as text on the page. Tonsay teaches sey. He does NOT appear in the app: the no-persona rule is scoped to the app surface, and teaching the sport on the site is his ratified first duty. The 🐇 tiles are placeholders — the settled design is the constellation-rabbit hugging the moon-bowl, and these are not an approximation of it. These are coaching notes, not rules. Nothing here may contradict shared/rules.md, and nothing that belongs in the ruleset may hide here. -->Start with Friendship, and go slowly. Nobody is keeping score, so there is nothing to lose by getting it wrong. The first few rounds are just people saying their names to each other, which is the entire point.
Let the person say their own name first. If you have never met, you will get it wrong, and being corrected once is better than being called the wrong thing for a year. Ask. Then say it back.
Pass the caller's job around. The shy player who calls fifteen names has done more for the circle — and for themselves — than anyone who caught fifteen.
When the streak dies, it dies. It always will. Start again from nothing. That is not a failure state, it is the shape of the game.
Take these rules
Everything above is CC0. Copy it, translate it, print it for a wall, teach it as your own. No permission is needed and none can be withheld.
Here is the whole sport as a file, so you can do that without retyping it: rules.md. It is the same copy this page is written from.
Building your own app for sey? The caller has to deal names equally yet randomly, and that is the one promise a player cannot check by watching. So the sequence is a pure function of the circle and a seed — anyone can recompute a finished session and confirm nobody was skipped or quietly protected. The contract is caller-spec.md, with conformance vectors to check your implementation against. Both CC0.