My Web of Words - 11 - Punch

While making the connections in my last article between the words 'table', tabula and the game of tawleh, I remembered the custom in Lebanon and other countries of the Levant of calling the outcome of the dice in a ritualised language particular to the game.

Each player throws two small, ivory-coloured dice in turn. If these come up five and two, the players say banj dou; for six and one, they say shesh yek. This is Persian - a language which, in the main, players don't speak and which they...