Cat's cradle is a well known series of string figures created between two people as a game. The name of the entire game, the specific figures, their order, and the names of the figures vary. Versions of this game have been found in indigenous cultures all over the world--from the Arctic to the Equatorial zones. In some regions of the US, this game is also known as Jack in the Pulpit.
The game begins with the first player wrapping a loop of string around the hand (around the fingers or wrists) and taking one side of the string and circling the hands again. Then this player performs the last two moves of Opening A: taking the string witch runs on the inside of the left arm onto the first finger of their right hand, then, reaching through the triangle created, the loop on the inside of the right hand is taken onto the first finger of the left hand).
The aim of the game is to make a series of figures include the "cat's cradle". This is created by two sets of crossed string between both hands. A second player grasps each cross horizontally using the thumb and first fingers, pulls these outwards, down under the line which runs below the crosses from the first players wrists, and back up. The first player lets go of the figure and the second player stretches it open by bringing apart the thumbs and fingers. This figure is the "diamonds". A series of other alterations produce more figures, some of which lead back to the diamonds while some are dead ends and cannot be transformed. (Some say that "diamonds" is the cat's cradle from the game title, while others insist it's only the game title, and not any figures.)
This game is very simple and is always started with the above opening. After that one mostly pinches the x's and wrap them around the outside strings. The other moves tend to need a little more practice.
The origin of the name "cat's cradle" may have come from a corruption of cratch-cradle, or manger cradle (though this derivation is disputed by the OED). The French word for manger is crèche, and cattle feed racks are still known as cratches. The "manger cradle" is significant in the nativity: Jesus was born in a barn and laid in a manger because no other lodgings were available.
In an 1858 Punch Cartoon it is referred to as "Scratch Cradle", a name supported by Brewer's 1898 Dictionary Different cultures have different names for the game, and often different names for the individual figures. (For instance, the Russians call the whole game simply "the game of string" and the "diamonds" pattern a "carpet", and have names like "field", "fish" and "sawhorse" for all other figures. The cat isn't ever mentioned, but the cradle is, though it's the initial figure that is called so.)
Cat's cradle is probably one of humanity's oldest games, and is spread among an astonishing variety of cultures, even ones as unrelated as Europeans and the Dyaks of Indonesia; Alfred Wallace who, while traveling in Borneo, thought of amusing the Dyak youths with a novel game with string, was in turn very surprised when they proved to be familiar with it, and showed him some figures and transitions that he hadn’t previously seen. In China Cat's Cradle is called Catch Cradle. The anthropologist Louis Leakey has also described his use of this game to obtain the cooperation of Sub-Saharan African tribes otherwise unfamiliar with, and suspicious of, Europeans. A character in Joanna Russ's 1975 novel The Female Man calls cat's cradle "the universal symbol of peace".
Geneva Hultenius, Maryann DiVona, and Rita Divona completed 21,200 cat's cradles in 21 hours in Chula Vista, California. The Guinness Book of World Records reported it as a world record in the 1975 and 1976 editions.