Understanding Crossed-Arm

Juggling Patterns
An Illustrated Guide
Greg Phillips [email protected]
This guide uses a variant of Mike Day’s “Mills
Mess State Transition Diagrams” (MMSTD) to
illustrate some well-known (and not so well-
known) crossed-arm juggling patterns.
The MMSTD is a modeling language that
allows us to write down a concise description
(model) of a crossed-arm juggling pattern that
focuses on the essentials and leaves out
unnecessary detail.
For crossed-arm patterns, the first essential
piece of information is the relative position of
the arms when throws are made. Are the arms
crossed or uncrossed? If they’re crossed, which
one is on top? And which hand throws next?
MMSTD answers these questions by
identifying six possible states, which are
illustrated on page 2.
1
 Hand Positions
(States)

Rr Rl
Next throw
Arms crossed, comes from
Right hand on right hand.
top.

Arms
Ul Uncrossed.
Ur
Next throw
comes from
left hand.

Arms
crossed,
Lr Left hand Ll
on top. 2
Each state on page 2 represents the position of
the hands at the moment a throw is made. The
next essential piece of information we need is
what the hands do after making a throw. Do they
stay in the same relative position? Or do they
move to a new position? If so, which?
All the allowable hand movements, including
no movement, are illustrated by the arrows on
page 4. Note that transitions always take us from
“left throwing next” to “right throwing next” and
vice versa. So in this particular variant of the
MMSTD we can only describe so-called
asynchronous (L-R-L-R) patterns, but that’s
good enough for today’s purposes.
If you happen to look at the description of
MMSTD in Charlie Dancey’s Encyclopedia of
Ball Juggling you’ll notice a couple of
differences: Dancey distinguishes between
cascade and reverse cascade throws by having
different types of arrows, and he also doesn’t
include the long arrows running from corner to
corner of the diagram.
3
Throws and Movement
(Transitions)

Rr Rl

Ul Ur

Lr Ll
4
Now that we know about hand positions and
how they change, the last thing we need to add is
some information about the throws themselves.
For this we will mostly use asynchronous
siteswap notation. A quick summary:
• imagine a metronome marking a steady beat
• we throw on each and every beat
• we alternate left and right hand throws
• we write the siteswap representation of
juggling pattern as a string of numbers, one
number for each throw, where the number
represents how many beats later that object
must be back in the hand and ready to re-throw
Using this definition we find that the siteswap
for a three-ball cascade is just a series of threes
(which we abbreviate as ‘3’); the siteswap for a
four-ball fountain is 4, and so on. The siteswap
for a three ball shower is 51 — the high throws
are fives and the low crossing throws are ones.
For more thorough explanations see
www.jugglingdb.com/articles/?id=29 or
www.juggling.org/help/siteswap/
5
 3-ball
Cascade 3

Rr Rl
We add
asynchronous
siteswap numbers to
the arrows to indicate
the throw type.

3
Ul Ur
3
To get an n ball
cascade or fountain
for any number n,
simply replace the 3’s
with n’s.

Lr Ll
6
 Hands-crossed
3-ball Cascade 3
3
Rr Rl
3

Ul Ur

Lr Ll
7
 Windmill 3
(Left side)

Rr Rl

Ul Ur
3
Pop quiz: how do we
draw a right-side
Windmill?

3
Lr Ll
8
 Mills Mess 3
3
Rr Rl
3 Any pattern whose
diagram’s arrows
follow this path is a
Mills Mess variant.
3
Ul Ur
3
To get an n ball Mills
Mess for any number
n, simply replace all
the 3’s with n’s.
3
Lr 3 Ll
9
I mentioned earlier that the MMSTD notation
was invented by Mike Day. Mike is also one of
the co-inventors of siteswap notation, which was
created independently by three different people
at about the same time in 1985 — the other two
were Paul Klimek and Bruce Tiemann (a.k.a.
Boppo, who coined the term “siteswap”).
Mike Day is also the Mike in the Mike’s Mess
juggling pattern, illustrated on page 9. He
invented the pattern by playing around with the
notation and seeing what came out; as you might
imagine there are many more crossed-arm
juggling patterns waiting to be discovered in the
MMSTD.
Note that in siteswap notation a two can
indicate a very quick “throw to the same hand”
but it can also be “juggled” simply by holding
onto the ball. The siteswap 522 is sometimes
called the slow cascade. Mike’s Mess is a slow
cascade with each throw made under the
opposite arm.

10
 Mike’s Mess 522

Rr Rl
Remember that a 2 5
is normally juggled
as a hold — so the
only visible throws
here are the 5’s.
2
2
Ul Ur
2
2 This version looks great
with clubs where the
fives are doubles and
the twos are cross-
follows…
5
Lr Ll
11
 Fast and Low
Mike’s Mess 3

Rr Rl
3
… and this version
looks nice with
balls.

Ul Ur

3
Lr Ll
12
 A Jerky
“Not Mike’s Mess” 522

Rr 5 Rl
2
Hold with no arm
movement just
after the throw.
2
Ul Ur
2

2
Lr 5 Ll
13
 Another Jerky
“Not Mike’s Mess” 522

Rr Rl
2 5
Hold with no
arm movement
just before the
throw. 2
Ul Ur
2

5 2
Lr Ll
14
I had always been told that the Boston Mess was
essentially “Mills Mess juggled in columns.” I
more or less believed this explanation until the
first time I drew the MMSTD for the Boston
Mess, which you can see on page 16. It seems
pretty clear to me that this isn’t Mills Mess at all
since the diagrams look nothing alike.
If that was surprising, you can imagine my
surprise when I realized that there are at least six
distinct patterns that can reasonably be called the
Boston Mess. These are illustrated on pages 16
through 21.
Three of the Boston Messes are juggled with
the columns in left-right-middle (LRM) order
and three are juggled RLM. Two have the right
hand crossing over the left, two have the left
over the right, and two alternate left over right
with right over left. Each feels distinctly
different and all six are fun to learn.

15
 Boston Mess
(right up, LRM) 3
3
Rr (middle) Rl
3 (left)
3
(right)
3
(right)
3
Ul (middle) Ur
3 (left)

Lr Ll
16
 Boston Mess
(left up, RLM) 3

Rr Rl

3
Ul (right) Ur
3 (middle)
3
(left)
3
(left)
3
(right)
Lr Ll
3 (middle) 17
 Boston Mess
(right up, RLM) 3
3
Rr (right) Rl
3 (middle)
3
(left)
3
(left)
3
Ul (right) Ur
3 (middle)

Lr Ll
18
 Boston Mess
(left up, LRM) 3

Rr Rl

3
Ul (middle) Ur
3 (left)
3
(right)
3
(right)
3
Lr (middle) Ll
3 (left) 19
 Boston Mess
(switching, LRM) 3
3
Rr (middle) Rl
3 (left)
3
(right)
3
3 (middle) (right)
3(left)
Ul 3 (middle) Ur
3 (left)
3
(right)
3
(right)
3
Lr (middle) Ll
3 (left) 20
 Boston Mess
(switching, RLM) 3
3
Rr (right) Rl
3 (middle)
3
(left)
3
(left) 3(right)
3 (middle)
Ul 3 (right) Ur
3 3 (middle)
(left)
3
(left)
3
(right)
Lr Ll
3 (middle) 21
Burke’s Barrage 423
4
Rr Rl
2

3
Ul Ur
3

2
Lr 4 Ll
22
 Windshield
Wipers 423

Rr Rl
4

3
2
Ul Ur
2
3

4
Lr Ll
23
 Mills Mess with a
burst of “shower” 44133
3
Rr Rl
4

4 3
1
Ul 1 Ur
3 4
The 441 sequence
looks like a burst of
shower because of the
hand motions. But it
isn’t, really. 4
Lr 3 Ll
24
 The Geyser
444042
2
Rr Rl
4

4
Ul Ur
4

0
Lr 4 Ll
25
 441 Mills Mess (a)
4
Rr Rl
4 The easiest of the
three 441 Mills Mess
patterns since the
ones are thrown from
the uncrossed 1
position.

Ul Ur
1

4
Lr 4 Ll
26
 441 Mills Mess (b)
1
Rr Rl
4 The numbers have
been rotated one
place around the
loop. Note the cross-
armed one. 4
Ul Ur
4

4
Lr 1 Ll
27
 441 Mills Mess (c)
4
Rr Rl
… and now two
1 rotated two places.
As with 441, there
are three Mills Mess
variations for any
period 3 siteswap. 4
Ul Ur
4 Examples include
423, 501, 423, 531,
552, 534, 561, 801,
831, 714, 744, 771,
774, etc. 1
Lr 4 Ll
28
 Rubenstein’s
Revenge 52233

Rr Rl
5
3

3
2
2
Ul Ur
2
2
3 Looks a bit like
Mike’s Mess with a
burst of Windmill.
3 Feels like it too.
5
Lr Ll
29
These last few patterns involve throwing
multiple objects at the same time from one hand.
These multiplex throws are written in square
brackets. [32] means a single throw, of two
objects, where one will be re-thrown three beats
later and the other re-thrown two beats later. In
the patterns on the following pages all the
multiplexed twos as well as some of non-
multiplexed twos are thrown and then clawed;
for clarity I’ve indicated thrown twos as “2t”.
The original Georgian Shuffle was invented in
1991 by some bored jugglers waiting for a plane
at the Moscow airport on their way to a juggling
festival in Tblisi Georgia, USSR. The version on
page 31 is a variation invented by Colin E. The
3-ball Singapore Shuffle was invented by Loh
Koah Fong of Singapore in 1999 as a symmetric
extension of Colin’s Georgian Shuffle. In 2001
Koah Fong extended it to four balls, and a few
weeks later I extended it to five. It seems
obvious once you see the diagrams, but it wasn’t
at the time. The Kingston Shuffle is brand new!
30
 Colin E.’s Georgian
Shuffle Variation [32t]322t

Rr Rl

[32t]

2t
Ul 2 Ur

Lr Ll
31
 Singapore Shuffle
[32t]2t2t
2t
Rr Rl

[32t] 2t

Ul Ur

all twos
2t are thrown!
2t

Lr Ll
[32t] 32
 Four Ball Singapore
Shuffle [32t][32t]2t
[32t]
Rr Rl

[32t] 2t

Ul Ur

2t all twos
[32t] are thrown!

Lr Ll
[32t] 33
Five Ball Singapore
Shuffle [32t]

Rr Rl
[32t]

Ul Ur

all twos
are thrown!

[32t]
Lr Ll
34
 Kingston Shuffle
(by Greg Phillips) [32t]3322t

Rr Rl
[32t]
3

3 2t
Ul 2 2 Ur
2t 3

3
[32t]
Lr Ll
35
 © Greg Phillips, 2002

Prepared for a workshop presented at the

2002 International Jugglers’ Association
Summer Festival, in Reading, PA.

This guide may be reproduced in any form

provided the complete text and figures,
including this permission note, remain
intact.

36