Today’s story starts with a clip from an NFL game, but don’t worry if you don’t know anything about American football — you won’t need to for this to make sense. — Dan

The Great Minnesota Goose Scandal of 2017

On October 9, 2017, millions of Americans tuned in to watch the Minnesota Vikings host the Chicago Bears for a matchup of Monday Night Football. Chicago fans left the game sad, as their team lost, 20-17. But Minnesota fans, while happy, had something to complain about, too.

Let’s go to the videotape:

If you’re not familiar with American pro football, it’s common for players and their teammates to celebrate when they score a touchdown. Some touchdown celebrations are more elaborate than others, and this one is certainly on the elaborate side. About midway through the 3rd quarter, Minnesota Vikings tight end Kyle Rudolph caught a touchdown pass, scoring his team six points. He and some of his teammates celebrated by play a quick game of “duck, duck, goose.” (If you listen carefully at about ten or 11 seconds in, Rudolph, number 82, taps #65 on the head and yells “goose!”)

Sometimes, celebrations like this offend the other team and their fans, but in this case, it wasn’t the Chicago Bears fans who were annoyed. It was the faithful of the Minnesota Vikings that objected. Why? Because they don’t play “duck, duck, goose” in Minnesota.

They play “duck, duck, grey duck.”

If you’re not familiar with “duck, duck, goose,” it’s a simple game typically played by young children. All but one child sits in a circle. The remaining child walks around the circle, tapping each seated kid in order, saying “duck” as they tap. After tapping two children and saying “duck,” the circle-walker can, if they choose, say “goose” instead of duck. If they do, the goose immediately gets up and chases the circle-walker (who is now a circle-runner) around the circle, hoping to tag the person they are chasing. If the circle-walker sits where the goose was previously seated before being tagged, the circle-walker is safe and the goose becomes the new circle-walker. If not, the circle-walker remains the circle-walker.

“Duck, duck, grey duck” is the exact same game except that the circle-walker nominates the chaser by tapping them on the head and saying “grey duck.” And it’s only played in Minnesota and parts of some surrounding states. It’s a silly regionalism with unclear origins, although as seen here, it dates back to at least 1950. The prevailing theory is that both versions of the game come from Sweden, which has both "anka anka gås” — that is, “duck, duck, goose” — and “anka anka grå anka," which, as you probably guessed, means “duck, duck, grey duck.” According to the Minnesota Star-Tribune, “the theory goes that the Swedes who played the second version, ‘grå anka," were the ones that settled in Minnesota.” But that’s uncertain at best, and in any event, it doesn’t explain why there were two identical games with different names in Sweden.

And, generally speaking, awareness of the regionalism was low. If you grew up playing “duck, duck, goose,” you figured everyone did the same. Similarly, if you grew up playing “duck, duck, grey duck,” you’d have little reason to think there are any geese involved. Most of us stop playing the game at age four or five, after all. When WCCO, the CBS TV affiliate in Minnesota, asked some locals about the dichotomy, they found a few examples of this. For example, “enrichment teacher Betsy Johnson said she hadn't heard "Duck, Duck, Goose" until she went to college in Boston. ‘I had no idea where they got that from,’ she said. "We debated about it and I always thought I was right.’”

So when Rudolph led the Vikings on his little preschool game tribute, he, not being a native son of Minnesota, went with what he knew: “Goose.” And that set off a small local controversy, which the Star-Tribune half-jokingly noted in a separate article:

Rudolph was blissfully unaware of the existence of grey ducks (at least in this context), and he wasn’t alone. As he told WCCO, only one of his teammates, Minnesota-native Adam Theilen, thought “goose” was incorrect: ‘[Theilen] had no idea that it was called Duck, Duck, Goose everywhere else in the United States except for here,” he said. But Rudolph realized the error of his ways, stating that “Minnesotans are proud about their Duck, Duck, Gray Duck and it's something to hang your hat on I guess.”

Minnesotans seemed to accept that explanation — Rudolph remained on the Vikings for three additional seasons after that one.

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More About Minnesota

Today’s Bonus fact: In 2017, American singer Lizzo released the song “Truth Hurts.” It didn’t become a chart-topper right away but in large part due to social media, it became a viral success and earned a re-release in 2019. That year, it topped the Billboard Hot 100 and received a ton of radio play. And for fans of the Green Bay Packers, a football team, that was a problem. The song makes a reference in its chorus to a “new man on the Minnesota Vikings,” and the Packers and Vikings are fierce rivals. WIXX-FM, the radio station that broadcasts Packers games, wanted to play Lizzo’s song but didn’t want to promote the Minnesota squad. So as the Green Bay Press Gazette explains, the station censored the song instead: “WIXX made the decision to edit out all the Vikings references, not unlike it has done in the past for songs with profanity. In Green Bay, you can make the argument ‘Vikings’ is just another dirty word.”

From the Archives: How a Minnesota Town Body Slammed Its Neighbor: The brief history of the town of Ventura, Minnesota.

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And thanks! — Dan