Five is 'a mano, the hand. This is the rare square where the figure needs no folklore at all: a hand has five fingers, and the picture is the count.
Neapolitan lists print both 'a mano and 'a mana. Sicily has a manu at the same number. Where a figure is this obvious, the boards tend to agree.
- 5
- 'A mano
- the hand
- Row 1–10 of the tabellone
Where the figure comes from
Self-evident, and one of only a handful of squares where that can be said honestly. The hand is five because it has five fingers.
Other things filed on 5
In Neapolitan life
Five appears in the oldest recorded standing bet in Naples. Matilde Serao, reporting on the city's lotto habit in Il ventre di Napoli in 1884, listed the lines everyone played out of sheer custom, and among them was «il terno famoso, cinque, ventotto e ottantuno» — five, twenty-eight and eighty-one. She adds, drily, that those combinations came up about once in twenty years.
5 in the smorfia — frequently asked
Five fingers. It is the most literal pairing on the board.
Yes. The Sicilian smorfia recorded in Trapani also has the hand at 5, which is unusual — most squares differ between the two.