Apple bobbing on Halloween at an English school in Taiwan. Note that each child has a separate tub for hygiene reasons.
Apple bobbing (also known as bobbing for apples, as dooking in Scotland and as snap apple in Ireland) is a traditional game often played at Halloween parties.
Players have to remove apples from a tub of water without using their hands, only using their mouths. Players are usually told to put their hands behind their backs, sometimes their hands are tied behind their backs. The game can be made more challenging by making the players wear blindfolds. The winner is either the first person to remove an apple from the tub or the person who removes the most apples.
Variations on the game include placing the apples on top of poles or hanging them from strings or wires. The first player who manages to bite the apple is the winner in those versions of the game. Other types of food are sometimes used in place of apples in the second variant version, sticky doughnuts being a popular choice.
In Agatha Christie's 1969 Hercule Poirot mystery Hallowe'en Party and its 2010 television adaptation, the murder victim is drowned in an apple bobbing tub.
In It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, apple bobbing Is one of the games at the Halloween party held by the girl Violet. The girl Lucy is the first one to have go. She finds that the apple she has caught is in the mouth of the dog Snoopy, much to her disgust.