What game do Pooh and his friends play by dropping sticks from a bridge?

Poohsticks is the bridge game in which players drop sticks into a stream and watch to see whose emerges first.

The game appears in The House at Pooh Corner, where Winnie-the-Pooh invents it with his friends. The basic contest is simple: players stand on one side of a bridge, release sticks into the water, and run to the other side to see which stick arrives first.

Poohsticks became associated with the real Poohsticks Bridge in Ashdown Forest, the landscape that inspired Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood. Visitors have played versions of the game there for decades, although the bridge itself has been repaired and reconstructed over time.

The name is often written as one word, “Poohsticks.” It is a literary game rather than a formal sport with a universally fixed scoring system, so local versions can vary while keeping the same central idea.