Acka-backa, soda cracker

[Mullins, Bill]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Jonathan Lighter
>Sent: Sat 1/29/2005 9:57 AM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: Acka-backa, soda cracker
> 
>  One could cheat by saying "You!" after the spelling and pointing to the next victim.

My remembrance is that cheating could be done with all of these (one potato, two potato was the other most common one).  If the count didn't land on the "right" person at the end, the person counting would append:

"My mo-ther said to pick 
[and the next word would be "you" if that brought forth the desired result, otherwise it would go on as ...]
the ve-ry best one
[could stop here]
and that would be [or "is", which reduces the number of syllables by one] YOU
[which could, as said above, be said as a word or spelled out]"

Watching the person counting going through the mental gymnastics to force the desired outcome removed all semblance of randomness.  I always preferred elimnations by "rock paper scissors", until somebody would throw in "dynamite", which beat rock and paper, but lost to scissors because they could cut the fuse.