Zippy and other advanced 4-5 person patterns

Prerequisites: Any basic synchronous takeouts like Scrambled V; Next: North-wall patterns or Takeouts in four-handed siteswaps

All standard scrambled and ambled patterns are right-handed and use four-count or two-count as the base pattern. Zippy is based on a rotating pass-pass-self feed is a good starting point to explore patterns with more interesting base patterns and even a left-handed takeout.

Zippy

Hints: Some find counting aloud 1 to 8 useful to keep the time and coordinate what to do. The first manipulation is left-handed. The manipulator should turn quickly out to the left of A after placing that substitution to make place for A's pass on beat 4. Then, the manipulator catches two clubs in a row, and B and C can make it easy by throwing them lofty. B starts walking after their pass on beat 5 (or even slightly earlier). The previous A is now the new manipulator, carries the pass, and then substitutes a pass, while B is walking, stepping quickly out to the left at the end to open B's passing lane. At the end, the manipulator has two zips (beat 8 and 1) that usually come naturally -- the first zip is often automatic and the second happens when realizing that the next substitution is left-handed. Canonically, one of those two zips should be behind the back.

When Zippy became popular, some in the community started exploring variations on the same base pattern, this site has a spreadsheet with 81 variations: https://passing.zone/zippy_1/. Of course, it is also possible to combine various combinations of those for a 5-person pattern, for example, Chippy-Zippy.

Beyond Zippy

After Zippy, some more patterns explored synchronous ambidextrous base patterns. They can be challenging and interesting, but they tend to be less well known.

Dumb ways to die. Dumb ways to die is a pattern based on what's called a civil war feed as the base pattern. There is no walking here in the base pattern, but positions rotate due to three manipulator switches within the sequence.

BrunEd. BrunEd was an early attempt to have a 4-person pattern with the MinuEd manipulator sequence, using a pass-pass-self version of Bruno's nightmare as a base pattern. This one is very challenging for the feeder, who needs to pass around the manipulator to various different locations. It has not caught on.

There is no equivalence of a north-wall pattern for 3 passers and a manipulator where everybody cycles to the pattern both left and right-handed. Even period patterns like Zippy and Dumb ways to die do not flip sides, and odd period patterns like BrunEd simply have two jugglers doing the right side of the pattern and two jugglers doing the left side, without ever swapping.

Brunickolf. Brunickolf is a 5-person takeout pattern on the standard Bruno's nightmare base pattern. It is composed of two 4-person patterns that have only one of the manipulators each.

The 5-person pattern is a north-wall pattern with two sides, but the two 4-person patterns again have two passers do the right-handed sequence and two passers do the left-handed sequence.

MiniEd. MiniEd is another attempt of a 4-person pattern with a part of the MinuEd manipulator sequence, this one based on a very fast pass-pass-self feed with two passers walking clockwise on a three count (C on beat 2 and A on beat 4) as the base pattern.