This article started out as the Sports of Dune, but the content came up so thin that I decided to expand it to any kind of activity that people would do for fun. Then again, “fun” seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

It very much looks like the people in the Known Universe have a very utilitarian approach to life: they are always doing something productive or useful. (The more I think about it, the worse I feel about myself.) Nothing that’s l’art pour l’art or le jeu pour le jeu, really.

Harry Potter has Quidditch, the Witcher has Gwent, the Wheel of Time has Stones, and even the utilitarian (although a bit more optimistic) world of Star Trek has holo suites for entertainment.

And what do we get in Dune? A single reference to Cheops outside the original book? Some sort of baseball and a form of bowling?

I had to dig deep for this one - here’s all the activities I found that are done just for fun.

Games

Cheops

Cheops is the Greek name for Khufu, the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid at Giza, so the game is named after the biggest pyramid we've got.

CHEOPS: pyramid chess; nine-level chess with the double object of putting your queen at the apex and the opponent’s king in check.
‍— Terminology of the Imperium, Dune [1965]

We don’t really get much more than the description in the first book’s appendix, but I’ve always imagined it as something like Star Trek’s 3D chess - but in the shape of an actual pyramid, split into nine levels. Maybe held up by suspensors?

That said, the board in Villeneuve’s movie looks quite cool as well.

Feyd-Rautha uses a game of cheops he played with his slavemaster as an alibi to clumsily cover his tracks during a failed assassination attempt on the Baron Harkonnen

And then you need to read until the last book to get another reference to the game → Sheeana poking at Bellonda.

"I've heard you say, Bell, that logic is good for playing pyramid chess but often too slow for needs of survival. "
‍— Chapterhouse: Dune [1985]

Balls

I found only two games that fit the category.

One, I assume, is either a variation of baseball (or hurling or cricket) or some other game that’s played with a bat and a ball. Because it’s aptly named: batball. Here’s all we get in the middle of Heretics.

In his younger days, Tuek had played batball.
‍— Heretics of Dune [1984]

That’s it.

And then later in the book, we get lawn bowling that Duncan Idaho doesn’t think is cool enough for young people.

He remembered sitting at the edge of a wide lawn. There was some kind of bowling game in progress - eccentric balls that bounced and darted with no apparent design. The players were young men in a common costume of Giedi Prime!
"They are practicing to be old men," he said. He remembered saying that.
His companion, a young woman, looked at him blankly.
"Only old men should play these outdoor games," he said.
‍— Heretics of Dune [1984]

And finally, there’s one more reference to a kid playing with a ball in Messiah, but it quickly becomes a metaphor for Alia’s sense of uncertainty.

Riddles

Imagine you’re a Fremen, out in the desert, doing Fremen things. Every now and again you might want to take a break from the raids and the spice gathering, and do something more… cerebral. You’re a descendant of the Zensunni wanderers after all.

So you do riddles.

There could be no fixed tradition. There could be no absolute answers to double-faced questions. What works? That which does not work. What does not work? That which works. [Stilgar] recognized this pattern. It was the old Fremen game of riddles. Question: "It brings death and life." Answer: "The Coriolis wind."
‍— Children of Dune [1976]

I was reminded of this when reading Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, where we learn (in book 3, I think) that Gunslingers were adepts of the riddle. Coincidentally, Roland’s ka-tet plays a life-and-death riddle game with Blain the Mono, ostensibly a thinking machine.

Arts

And speaking of cerebral, a lot of what passes for a pastime activity is doing a form of art. And while I’m personally offended by the lack of video games, honestly, it’s quite on-brand for Dune to have people do things that both express and inspire the human spirit.

Music

We’ve already covered all the musical instruments and collected all the songs of Gurney Halleck, so this is just to say that there are a good few examples of people playing some kind of music just for their own entertainment.

In Messiah, Farok’s son was playing the baliset as Scytale entered their home. And as we know, the baliset is not an easy thing to master. In Children, Leto II (albeit his body being only nine years of age) was already practicing for four years and still having trouble with the bass strings, and in God Emperor, a young Fish Speaker was playing a biwa lute outside of Moneo’s office.

Yes, that young acolyte had a talent. The bass strings were like rain drumming on a rooftop, a whisper of middle strings underneath. Perhaps she could move up to the baliset someday.
‍— God Emperor of Dune [1981]

Poetry, painting & sculpting

Music is often expressed with song, which in turn can be recited as poetry.

“Review, friends—troops long past review,” the Duke intoned. “All to fate a weight of pains and dollars. Their spirits wear our silver collars. Review, friends—troops long past review: Each a dot of time without pretense or guile. With them passes the lure of fortune. Review, friends—troops long past review. When our time ends on its rictus smile, we’ll pass the lure of fortune.”
‍— Dune [1965]

And even if you’re not as talented as a Gurney Halleck, your few lines of verse are still considered poetry, like in the case of Murbella.

The captive Honored Matre was a fascinating study ... and amusing at times. There was her joking doggerel posted on the wall of the ship's Acolyte dining room.
Hey, God! I hope you're there. I want you to hear my prayer. That graven image on my shelf: Is it really you or just myself? Well, anyway, here it goes: Please keep me on my toes. Help me past my worst mistakes, Doing it for both our sakes, For an example of perfection To the Proctors in my section; Or merely for the Heaven of it, Like bread, for the leaven of it. For whatever reason may incline, Please act for yours and mine.
‍— Chapterhouse: Dune [1985]

When it comes to tangible fine arts, Sheeana takes the crown. She is a prolific sculptor - her tools are called shapers, and her material of choice is sensiplaz.

Sheeana stepped back from her work. Close ... but not close enough. She could almost touch the form within her and feel it striving for birth. But the plaz was not right. One sweeping stroke of her right hand reduced it to a black blob on the stand.
‍— Chapterhouse: Dune [1985]

But she’s also a talented painter, using her artistic expressions as a way to organize her thoughts and feelings.

[…] a large black and white drawing of a giant worm poised above a tiny human figure.
That's the way they were and may never be again. What was I trying to say with that drawing? If I knew I might be able to complete the plaz sculpture.
‍— Chapterhouse: Dune [1985]

Theatre

If you don’t do arts yourself, you can still experience some form of theatre - whether you’re the poorest beggar in Arrakeen or the Emperor of the Known Universe.

At the bottom, you have two men working the steps of Alia’s Temple for some change.

Nearby among the pilgrims, two mummers played for a few coins, reciting the lines of the currently popular "Disputation of Armistead and Leandgrah."
‍— Children of Dune [1976]

On Larneaus, Miles Teg’s home planet, there’s an annual Winter Show, which includes a magician and a popular puppet troupe called Dit, Dat and Dot.

And of course, the most dazzling show, worthy of an Emperor, is put on by Tleilaxu Face Dancers.

And he thought of the performance out there in the Great Hall. The dancers had entered in the costumes and guise of the Dune Tarot, flinging themselves about in seemingly random patterns that devolved into fire eddies and ancient prognostic designs. Then had come the rulers -- a parade of kings and emperors like faces on coins, formal and stiff in outline, but curiously fluid. And the jokes: a copy of Paul's own face and body, Chani repeated across the floor of the Hall, even Stilgar, who had grunted and shuddered while others laughed.
‍— Dune: Messiah [1969]

Children’s play

Here’s where it gets super weird for me. And I know that children’s play isn’t really the same as hobbies, but the leisurely pastimes I did find are Dickensian - in both senses of the word - and I simply can’t omit them.

There’s Odrade’s childhood, and the thing that proves it was a happy one:

Odrade remembered jumping on the narrow bed - a marvelously happy game: up, down, up, down. Much laughter.
‍— Heretics of Dune [1984]

Or one of the Duncans who shared a similar experience.

Duncan liked some of the guards and occasionally lured some of them into real play with laughter and tumbling.
‍— Heretics of Dune [1984]

And then there’s the Fremen childhood games, like hunting for scorpions or catching sandtrout - the flat, leathery, diamond-shaped larval form of the sandworms. You could use them as a fashion statement…

The sandtrout glove. It was the play of children. If one held a sandtrout in the hand, smoothing it over your skin, it formed a living glove. Traces of blood in the skin's capillaries could be sensed by the creatures, but something mingled with the blood's water repelled them. Sooner or later, the glove would slip off into the sand, there to be lifted into a spice-fiber basket. The spice soothed them until they were dumped into the deathstill.
‍— Children of Dune [1976]

…or have it as a sweet snack.

[Leto] remembered that once he and Ghanima had caught a sandtrout, abraded it against the sand until it contracted into the child-worm, a stiff tube, its interior pregnant with the green syrup. One bit gently upon the end and sucked swiftly before the wound was healed, gaining the few drops of sweetness.
‍— Children of Dune [1976]

What’s missing

Crafting, collecting things, over-analyzing the lore of your favorite sci-fi novels - not a single mention.

Team sports - indeed, any kind of sport. If it doesn’t serve a purpose (like sparring, preparing you for real combat), it doesn’t show up in the books.

We also don’t have gambling → to the point where Odrade is confused by the concept.

Gambler's choice? She knew the Mentat phrase but had never understood it.
‍— Heretics of Dune [1984]

It seems that any hobby we do see is borderline productive - whether it’s pyramid chess, riddles, or artistic expression -, and I think the omission of “useless” pastimes is not only on-brand but intentional.

Here’s Odrade, discovering a young man sunbathing in the nude.

Idleness was not encouraged and this was flaunting it. Odrade smiled to herself.
‍— Chapterhouse: Dune [1985]