I don't know about knocking, but we have the game with ringing a doorbell and running, it is called belletje lellen of belletje trekken. I live in the Netherlands.

Spook knocking - Leicester

Ooh I like this one.

Knock Down Ginger, London (SW if that makes a difference?)

Nick-knacking or nick-knocking, suburban Dublin, 70s/80s.

Tap latch in Wigan.

Knock door run, Leicester

yes, knock door run in North Birmingham too.

And south Birmingham

Ding dong ditch. Chicago suburbs.

Knock down ginger South of England (Beds/Herts)

Same here.

Same, Surrey.

Ding dong ditch: BC Canada. But we also used "Knicky knocky nine doors"

Knock-a-door-run, Derbyshire

This. East Yorkshire.

Same (Bolton)

We left out the ‘a’.

How prosaic, darling 🧐

Dint av no time fer no knockin down no gingers afteh pushin 'ovis bike oop hill tut mill

We had the non-more-prosaic* "Knock and run" (Liverpool, 1980s) *I suppose we could have called it "Knock on someone's door then run away before they answer it" but we were young and could not spare that kind of time

I called it knock and run in London in the 80s cos my dad's from liverpool and he played it, so I was ruining the patterns of local variation.

We (North-East) called it Knocky-nine-doors, although I've no idea why, as there was never a requirement to do exactly nine doors.

Knockadolly in the Republic of Ireland.

Knock and nash, north Cumbria.

OK. Like this one.

Knock Down Ginger - Surrey (me) Knicky Knocky Nine Doors - South Shields (husb)

Knock door, run.

Ginger

Surrey

Cherry knocking, Northamptonshire

knock-a-door-run in Leicester (boring) my friend from Barry Island calls it Rat-a-tat-ginger much more fun....

Spouse reports KNDR (Cheshire)!

Knock-a-door-run, south Lancs

Same

Likewise, Fylde coast, west Lancs.

And from a friend who lived in both country Victoria and Birmingham - Knock Door Run or Ratatat Ginger.

From country Victoria - Knick-knocking

Knock down ginger (Peckham)

I'm from the Black Country and had never heard of this game till adulthood, so I'm lurking in the comments to see what it was called around there

I find it fascinating!

Chickenelli - north-east Fife

Knock Up Ginger- Watford. Ironically one could "knock" on the girl who became Ginger Spice's door, for she lived just down the road from me and was in the same netball team as my sister at primary school.

Nice.

Knock knock ginger...Dorset & Wiltshire

Ding-Dong Ditch, Pacific Northwest

I had a friend from Cheltenham who called it Cherry Knocking

Knock down ginger - Essex

Belfast (Bell-Fast, gettit?) or Thunder and Lightning – Drogheda in Ireland.

Essex here, Knock Down Ginger it is. I have been passing on the tradition to my 6 year old who, rather charmingly, has renamed it Runaway Gingerman, which I think earns its place in the canon.

Knock Down Ginger. Staines, Middx.

Knocky nine doors. The North East.

knock a dolly in Waterford, Ireland

Knock Down Ginger- Bracknell, Berks.

Knock Down Ginger, Essex/London borders

Knock down Ginger - 70s/80s South East Wales - The 'knock up ginger' variation I've seen elsewhere has a whole different connotation, and I've never played that :D

Knock-door-run. Lincolnshire.

Cherry Knocking! 90s Northamptonshire.

Oh look, there's a whole survey, and a map!! yougov.co.uk/society/arti...

ooh thanks!

Trust the UK to have documented this kind of data. 😆

Nottingham here - it was "Knock Down Ginger" in the East Midlands too, contrary to what this map says - mind you, it was the 1960s/70s, so things may have moved on!

AMAZING!!! Thank you Emma and Louie xx

Who needs CHATGPT when you have bluesky?

"Belfast". Is it a pun? I think it might be a pun…

Knock knock ginger (Reading area)

Nicky Nicky Nine-Doors -- a village near Kingston, southeastern Ontario, Canada.

(In the seventies.)

knock down ginger - Lambeth

Same

Why was it called that? I’ve never really thought about it until now. I’m not sure anyone ever got knocked down, ginger or otherwise.

The Ginger part apparently was because you had to be nimble to sneak away undetected.

Ah ok. That kind of makes sense.

Yep, knock down ginger in Hanworth (LB Hounslow)

It's the only right answer

Same. Hackney.

The correct answer is Knicky-knocky-nine-doors, Durham, 1990s.

Durham is certainly the fanciest so for!

Knock and Nash. Knash? Gnash? Anyway. Carlisle, 90's.

Thunder and Lightning. Knock like thunder. Run like lightning lol Belfast childhood

Nick-knocking (80s Melbourne)

knock down ginger (kent, england)

Tok-tokkie in South Africa! 🇿🇦

Chap door run (West Lothian)

Same, chap door run, Scottish Borders

And Clackmannanshire.

Ding-dong-ditch. Northern California.

It was Ding Dong Ditch in Maryland (USA) in the 90s as well!

Also sometimes Ding Dong Dash!

Ok yeah I've heard that one too I think?

yes! SoCal as well.

Knock out Ginger, 70’s Bristol

knock a door run (Notts, England)

Knock Down Ginger - 80s South London When I used to visit family in Cork, the Irish kids called it Nick Knocking. We used to play it a lot over there despite everyone in town knowing all the kid’s parents.

Knock Down Ginger, East London DHL Left A Note, North London

Cherry knocking. Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire. 90’s (sidenote: I think my dad also used that term, but he spent most of his childhood on the Isle of Man and down near Portsmouth...)

(Mum grew up mostly in south wales in the 60s/70’s and it was bobby knocking to her!)

It was called "Knock-a-Ginger" in south east Wales in the '80s and '90s.

Knock and run, 1970s, Merseyside

Relevant: www.instagram.com/share/BAAmZD...

I don’t remember it having a name, but a friend’s cousin visiting from Germany called it “tock-tocky”

Knick Knock Ninety, Stranraer, Scotland

Knock down ginger - SW London.

Chiming in from the American south, it had a very racist name until the 70s and probably still does today in too many areas.

Cherry knocking when I was a lad in 1970s Northamptonshire

Nicky-nicky-nine-doors. Western Canada, 80s/90s.

Same, Southern Ontario, 70s

I've got this idea of a fairly homogenous settler Canadian culture from the border between Ontario and Quebec right out to the Pacific Ocean. Yes, there are loads of differences, but when I compare it to "the next valley from here" in the UK, it's stunningly consistent.

Knock down ginger

Belfast - Knock the doors and run away - very literal, you knew what you were signing up for. Sometimes it was ‘knock the doors’ - to the seasoned knockers of course

I say Knock Down Ginger, the kid says Ding Dong Ditch. Cambridge, UK

Knock a door run in the West Midlands in the 1990s. I also briefly came out of retirement in the 2010s when drunk in Kensington and fuelled by 1 percenter outrage.

Chickenelli - Aberdeenshire (80s/90s). We never really played it though, because out street was built in the 70s and had massive glass front doors. It made it pretty difficult to get away without getting caught. Probably for the best. I'd have fallen over my untied Doc Marten laces.

Glass doors would totally give the game away!

Klingelmäuschen - Cologne, Germany. Literally translated "[door] bell little mouse"... In the sense of a little mouse scuttling away after doing something silly 😅

Oh, cultural annotation... as I grew up in something of a high rise apartment ghetto in the late 70's, early 80's, we had to ring the bell; there was no knocking on doors 👍

Like most people south of the Watford Gap, mine was Knock Down Ginger.

The Tommyknockers. Bangor, Maine.

is that the variant where you steal the batteries out of their doorbell too?

Ayuh.

Knock down ginger - Buckinghamshire

Ding-dong-ditch, Nebraska & Iowa

Knock on Ginger Welsh borders

West Yorkshire: Knock-a-door-run

Postman's knock. Never played it - the drives were too long. 😂 Chigwell. Today, I'd probably call it Knock Down Ginger. But today I live in the countryside and I'm 52, so I still don't play it!

Ding-Dong Ditch, Midwest

Knock Down Ginger, on the mean streets of St Margarets/Twickenham

Likewise, but just thought it was called Ring The Bell And Run Away!

“Chap door run” (Fife, early 1980s)

Knock Down Ginger - 80s Somerset. AKA "Oh for fucks sake Jamie" as we all legged it cos no one expected him to bang on 5 doors in a row as we're wandering down the street.

Rat tat ginger, also 1980s Somerset.

Ginger features in a lot of this sample. I wonder where that came from? There's probably a monster story in it. But then I'm always looking for monsters.

@gargarin.bsky.social is blaming E. Nesbit elsewhere in the thread.

hahahaha. Everyone has a jamie in their friend group.

It's when said Jamie legs it past you laughing and you're left to be shouted at. Happy days 🙄

Same Also 80s Somerset.

I guess if I'm honest it was technically "Avon" but my family had *STRONG* opinions about "The non-metropolitan and ceremonial county of Avon".

Full on ‘Zet for me although I’m now very much in the middle of “former-Avon”.

There is, I have discovered, a foolproof way to find out if an individual had ties to Somerset as a child. You just ask them what Australian Crunch is.

It's only the highlight of school dinner puddings! Did you get custard with it? We had mint (green, didn't taste of mint) or pink (obvs pink, didn't taste of anything).

Mint custard, obvs.

Perfect. It had to be mint, the pink came with syrup sponge adjacent puddings for us.

In the early years of the internet I did a search for it in the hopes of finding a recipe. I could only find one instance of Australian Crunch online and that was a conversation between two people on opposite sides of the world who very quickly discovered that they both went to school in Taunton.

Hah! Perfect. I'd be surprised if there's not a recipe for it somewhere now though, nostalgia being such a strong driver of engagement.

I’m actually off to Cheddar in about an hour and might just pick myself up a slab from the bakery near my Mum.

I don’t remember ever doing it (too much of a goody two shoes probably) but I believe it was known as cherry knocking. I grew up in Northamptonshire.

Niknok. Liverpool. No idea how it was spelled, since it was never written down.

Belletje lellen. (I think that roughly translates into “To give a smack on a bell”) Dutch.

Ring bang squoosh, Glasgow

I grew up in Govanhill and we called it Ding Dong Skoosh.

We were in the suburbs with pretentions of mild poshness (moved to Govanhill in my teens). The spelling of skoosh/scoosh/squoosh is a dilemma

Can’t believe no one has already put up the Real Name™️ of Nick Knock Nanny (East Oxford)

Knock down ginger. South wales

In my group in Bristol, we called it "Knock out Ginger", but I suspect that was a mishearing from the more common "Knock down Ginger". Or maybe it was just a more violent part of the city...

Ha!

Knock a door run. North west, late 90s/early 00s

Knock down ginger, Essex

I grew up in Belfast and we called it Belfast Lightning. Cos you'd ring the bell and run as fast as lightning.

Ronsealesque "Knock and Run" in Sussex.

We called it Knock and Run in the Midlands too :)

In the Midlands too, we called it Knock Door Run.

London. Knock down ginger.

Michael Penn - calling it ring and run - wrote a whole song about it called “Big House” on his debut album. Great track. m.youtube.com/watch?v=jnrm...

It's deep in the cultural psyche!

Knock a door run, NW England

Thunder and Lightning

Amazon delivery

knock a door run, leigh (wigan)

Knock down ginger - Suffolk

Knick Knock (NW England)

Knocky Nine Doors, Newcastle, 90s

Knock down ginger. Cardiff in the 80s, although I don't remember it really being a pastime anymore. We had Pong on the computer!

Knocky nine door

Bobby knocking is the only name, all these other names involving ginger etc were made up by E Nesbit or some other posho. Yorkshire has spoken

haahahahaha

It was bobby knocking! I didn't trust my memory. South Yorkshire.

Yorkshire exceptionalism yet again.

Yorkshire Correctism as always

🙄 You can always tell a Yorkshireman…

Knock-a-door run. South Manchester (though we lived in a wee cul-de-sac & it was banned by the time we were coming up, but I remember my Mum catching the big boy up the street at it. That was hilarious!

knock down charlie, Cardiff

Knock down Ginger. I grew up in Bedfordshire.

Ha, me too (Sandy, Beds) but I said Knock Door Ginger because I probably misheard & I was a very literal child... Also, our neighbour was very ginger so I felt guilty...

Knock door Ginger. I grew up in Bedfordshire too. Obv regional variant.

We called it that in Wembley (Middlesex as was - and in my head still is) too.

Same, South Cambridgeshire

Was coming to say exactly this!

Knock down ginger…!!! I grew up Worthing, West Sussex.

The one I like the best is Ding Ding Ditch (can't remember where that's from though)

Ding Dong Ditch is US, not heard the ding variant!

Knock down Ginger

Belleke trek. I grew up in Flanders. It sort of translates to “bell pulling” or “pull the bell”. (I know you were aiming for English regional words, but I like this one; it’s v Flemish in its own way.)

Knock-a-door-run. West Yorkshire.

Knock Down Ginger - Hertfordshire

Chappie

Is that scotland?

Yes!

Awesome!

Knock down ginger, east London

As a child I knew it as "Knock and Run". ...These days I call it "Antisocial Behavior"...

Ding-dong ditch, Los Angeles (though we rang the doorbell)

Don't think we called it anything! We had a big row of doorbells at the hall and of course no camera or intercom there in the 80s, so of course some kids would press all of them then run off.

That would have been Jamie 😏

The Nameless Game

Chap-door-runaway (in Scotland at least!), abbreviated to 'chappie'.

Doorbell dash. Manila (but with American expats)

Knock down ginger. South London.

Knocky Nine Doors in County Durham!

Knock Out Ginger (N.Yorks & then Hampshire)

That's a new one on me!

What did we ever do 😭😅

Knock knock Ditch and Cork, Ireland!

Bobby Knocking, Swansea

Knock-a-door- run. Manchester.

Chappie, in the West of Scotland!

Scotland seems to be the most consistent across different regions!

Knock and Run - A seemingly overly literal Derby

Jackie Knockers😄. Truly. It's mentioned in Fallout and I have never heard of it being called that anywhere else. Maybe it's a Port Talbot thing??? Would you know @kaeltudor.bsky.social?

It was Knock-a-Ginger in Newport!

Oh heck.

From my parents: Knock Down Ginger. It involved tying a length of string to door knockers on opposite sides of the street so that when one door opened it knocked the other and so on...

Triple D in Detroit suburbs, Michigan!

Ding, dong, ditch!

The “I’m actually calling on a friend and I wanted to stay but I’m so pathologically terrified of unopened doors & making noise that I was too scared & ran away & I didn’t even know it was a game” not-game. (My mum had to accompany me until embarrassingly old.) Knock down Ginger, when I was told.

Ding-dong ditch (never played it) New England in the 70s & 80s

Imaginatively - Knock a Door Run. NW England

“Knock and run” suggests Stockport wasn’t very imaginative.

Ditto Salford

And St Helens

And small market towns in rural Hampshire.

And Ormskirk.

Cherry knocking

Ratty in South Wales

We’re having local elections so currently we call it “canvassing for votes” They usually run away because I’m getting ready to throw something.

hahahaha

Knock down ginger. London & Hampshire.

Nick-Knock in Melbourne, Australia 🤓

Also Dublin, Ireland in the 1960s 👍🏻

Knockdown Ginger. South London.

Knock-a-door run, West Yorkshire.

Rat-a-Tat Ginger, Herefordshire. Just called it Rat-a-Tat though, I think.

That's new on me!

The Game Where You Knock On A Door And Run Away And Then Feel So Wretchedly Guilty That You Slouch Back And Knock Again To Tell Them It Was You Knocking The First Time And I'm Sorry Please Don't Tell My Mum And Dad.

County Limerick.

ah the catholic version

That's where you knock on the confessional door during confession and run back to the pews. The priest ended up thinking it was an angel telling him how many decades of the rosary to give for penance. One lad got it up to ten before the devil swept down and carried him off. That put paid to that.

The devil does not come to play

You definitely don't go knocking on the devil's door.

Chapeau!

knock-a-door-run in Lancs

Knock And Run – Dorset Bit Ronseal, but that's what it was

Knicky knicky nine doors (Toronto, Canada)

Thunder and Lightning (Belfast)

Training for Amazon Delivery

Knocky nine doors - West end of Newcastle

i never played it 😭 i knew it as doorbell chicken though lol

and fwiw i don't remember if that's Fulham or Somerset because there wasn't a doorbell nearby in our bit of Somerset, one of the locals had geese that would honk if you walked up to the gate

I’m sure that there’s a game in setting the geese off! That would be every bit as annoying for the occupants.