It has taken me a quarter of a century to make the connection between a particular word and the few minutes I spent beside a frozen lake in Moscow one winter afternoon during the Cold War.

The word is “bandy.” Ask me to define it, and my initial response would be “bow-legged.” But that provides no link to my Moscow memory. Pushed further, I will dredge up, from the three years I spent working with reptiles in a zoo, the Latin words Vermicella annulata, which refer to a venomous black-and-white Australian snake, more commonly known as the bandy-bandy. The Russian winter is no place for a bandy-bandy.

There is a verb, to bandy: “to exchange words in a heated or hostile manner.” On that gray, misty day in the Soviet capital, I was careful not to exchange any words — hostile or otherwise — with the group of Red Army soldiers who stood in front of me in their heavy coats and fur hats.

The soldiers were watching a game. I watched with them. Twenty-five years on, I am finally able to resolve a slow-burning mystery. What was the game I witnessed on that freezing afternoon behind the Iron Curtain? The answer is revealed by the eighth definition in my dictionary: “an early form of hockey, often played on ice.”

I discretely lurked behind the soldiers at the top of a snowy bank. Spread beneath us was the largest improvised ice rink I had ever seen. Marked out with red lines, it was precisely the size of a soccer field.

The two opposing teams of 11 players appeared to be engaged in a game of ice hockey. But as I lingered, I picked up notable departures from that sport. The playing area was double the size of an ice hockey rink. There were too many participants — in ice hockey, there would be just six players per side. And where was the puck? These young Russian players were using their sticks to propel an orange ball.

The history of bandy stretches back more than a thousand years. In medieval Russia, a game employing primitive skates, sticks and a ball was played by monks on frozen rivers. A similar game evolved in the flat fenlands of eastern England.

In the 19th century, English bandy evolved in tandem with soccer. To this day, the sport is often referred to as winter soccer. I recognized some common elements as I stood on that windswept bank. The game flowed expansively back and forth.
Players searched for space in which to receive the ball.

In the goals at each end, the goalkeepers were without sticks. With each attack toward them, they shuffled from side to side in anticipation, ready to dive and parry the ball with their pad-protected bodies or with their gloved hands.

Milder winters all but killed off the game in England, but the Federation of International Bandy adopted the English code in the 1950s. As I saw for myself all those years ago, the game is free flowing and easy to follow. There are only 18 rules. This simplicity, together with the expansive playing area, encourages a game that is largely without body contact or dispute.

In my mind, the main obstacle preventing the sport from reaching an audience beyond its current strongholds in Russia and Scandinavia is the silly word it’s known by. There is no instinctive connection between those five letters and the thrilling pursuit they represent.

I resort to my dictionary once more to see if there is a more explanatory meaning. The fifth definition? “Bandy: to give and receive blows.” No, that’s not bandy. That’s ice hockey.