Quoits: It's Not Horseshoes, Really (English Pub Games Series)

The complete story of English pub games will appear in the March 2012 issue of Games Magazine.

Quite a few traditional pub games involve hurling potentially lethal objects through the air while consuming large quantities of alcohol. Take quoits, for instance. The first thing to remember is that quoits is not horseshoes, even though they look similar. Unlike darts, quoits actually does have a fairly ancient pedigree on English soil, dating at least to the Middle Ages. King Richard II banned it 1388 because the lower classes were playing it rather than working themselves death. Edward III and Henry V also banned the game, with a punishment of six days in prison for violators.

(One curious pattern in English gaming culture is the way certain games are banned from play by the laboring classes, while permitted for the upper classes. This happens over and over again, with almost every pub game banned some point, and many of the laws written to specifically exclude “gentlemen” from the ban.)

The earliest version of quoits involved simply throwing an object at a target on the ground, with victory going to the person nearest the target. The game really took off in the early 19th century with the growth of industrial labor, and the pubs began maintaining quoits greens and organized league play. In 1881, an amateur association created a semi-standard set of rules that was adopted by most of England. Naturally, these new rules were promptly ignored by the Scots and Welsh.

The basic “northern game” of quoits is played with a heavy, round steel disc, open at the center and weighing 5 ¼ pounds. Spikes (called “hobs”) are set 11 yards apart, with tips protruding three inches above a clay bed. A ringer scored two points, while the nearest quoit scored one point.

The Scots and Welsh stuck to their “long game,” which was played at a distance of 25 yards with quoits that could weight upwards of 15 pounds.

When thrown, these rings tend to imbed themselves in the clay, leading to unusual landing configurations and strange leaning positions requiring careful judging by officials. The game has more room for depth and strategy than horseshoes, in part because the flared circular shape allows for various kinds of hand holds with exotic names like The Frenchman, push pot, and face gater.

In Cornwell, people played a version of quoits called “kook,” with the objective being either to throw the ring father than the opponent, or closer to the target. In loggats, another regional variant, people threw smalls logs or bones at a stake planted in the ground, with the winner being whoever hit it or got closest. Henry VIII banned it, perhaps because he wasn’t yet finished with the bones. Hamlet mentions the game as he observes the gravedigger disinterring Yorick, asking, “Did the bones cost no more the breeding but to play at loggats with them?”

Aunt Sally: More Things to Knock Down Without Spilling Your Beer

Aunt Sally was the inspiration for my research into English pub games. The game was featured the British detective series Midsomer Murders, which regularly explores the bizarre festivals and customs of rural England. We couldn't tell what in the world the characters were doing or why, since we'd never seen anything quite like it. A little digging uncovered not only the rules and origins of Aunt Sally, but also the wonderful and weird world of traditional pub gaming. 

The complete story of English pub games will appear in the March 2012 issue of Games Magazine.

Photo from www.joinersarms.com

The Encyclopedia of Traditional British Rural Sports calls the origins of the skittle-like game Aunt Sally “obscure,” but offers several possibilities for its mysterious name. “Sally” is a dialect word for “hare,” and throwing-sticks were sometimes used to hunt hares in the 19th century. A more likely explanation is that “sally” means to pitch forward, and “aunt” is a reference to the vaguely feminine shape of the target. The French name is the far more evocative Wholesale Slaughter (“jeu de massacre”), which is just plan odd.

The modern version involves throwing six sticks 18 inches long and 2 inches round at a target. A pole, four feet tall, is set into the ground, while a fat white skittle with a bulbous head perches on the top. The goal is to knock this doll from its perch, with a point scored each hit. Players throw their 6 sticks in 4 rounds, for a maximum total of 24. It’s actually much harder than it sounds, and a score of 20 points is considered superb.

The game may have evolved out of a cruel bloodsport called “throwing at cocks”. A live chicken was tied to the top of a pole, and people took turns throwing sticks until someone killed it. The “winner” got to take the chicken home for the pot. It was usually played on Shrove Tuesday.

Joseph Strutt, in his 1801 book The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England from the Earliest Period, says that “Upon the abolition of this inhuman custom, the place of living birds was supplied by toys.” The game found its way from fairgrounds and fetes to the pub, where it shed its cruel heritage and became almost respectable as one of the “lawful games on licensed premises.” Local leagues are organized around pubs, and Championships are held in August and September. The game surged in popularity in the 20th century, with the Oxford League alone counting 120 teams, and six other leagues cropping up in pubs around the country.

In his definitive book Played at the Pub, author Arthur Taylor estimates that “come summer, over 2,500 men and woman can be found playing the game, usually on a Thursday night,” and indoors during winter. The popular British TV show Midsomer Murders even featured an Aunt Sally rivalry as a subplot in the episode “Dark Autumn,” which led to a minor resurgence of interest in the game. 

The game actually made it to American shores, and then migrated back to England in a new form around the year 1855. The American version involved throwing balls or batons at doll’s head affixed to a strike. The doll’s head had a pipe extending from it, and the goal was to knock the pipe off without hitting the head. In the game of Nacks, unique to Yorkshire, the target was a peg rather than a doll.

Skittles: Knocking Stuff Down Without Spilling Your Beer

This is part of my ongoing research on traditional British pub games. The complete, expanded article will appear in the March 2012 issue of Games Magazine, available wherever quality publications are sold.

The phrase “life isn’t all beer and skittles” seems a bit mysterious to American ears. When I first heard it as a boy, I wondered why anyone would want to mix a fruit-flavored candy with beer.

To British ears, however, the image of “beer and skittles” is one of leisure time at the pub spent enjoying an adult beverage while playing a game with friends. Its first appearance is in The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens, when Sam Weller remarks “It’s a reg’lar holiday to them — all porter and skittles.” (Porter is a dark ale.)

The saying would have made a lot more sense if Americans realized that skittles is a pub game that we’d lump together with bowling, since it involves knocking down pins with some rolled or thrown object. In England, however, ten-pin American-style bowling, “bowls” games, and skittles are all considered distinct and unique games, each with countless regional and historical variations.

Thanks to all these variants, and the lack of an authoritative governing body, coming up with a single definition for the entire class of skittles games can be tricky. Wikipedia takes off in the wrong direction by calling it a “European lawn game,” even though almost every notable version of skittles is played not on grass but on purpose-built alleys or hard floors. You could almost argue that a defining character of skittles that sets it apart from bowls is that it’s not a lawn game.

Perhaps the best place to start is with the most basic description. Nine pins are set in a diamond pattern at one end of a long, narrow, slightly raised surface that serves as an alley. Players stand varying distances away from these pins, and then attempt to knock them all down with a variety of projectiles in a variety of ways. A common version uses heavy, solid disks made of lignum vitae, a class of extremely hard, heavy, dense wood. These disks are called “cheeses” because their shape is similar to that of a round of cheese. (“Cheese” is now a generic term for any thrown object in skittles, regardless of shape.) Points are awarded for knocking each pin down, with an extra point awarded for knocking them all down. A set of throws is called a chalk, and three chalks make a game.

Within this basic framework, skittles has spun off a baffling array of variations. The pins may be long, short, thin, stout, big, small, rounded, squared, or any one of several shapes. Nine pins, arrayed in three rows of three pins each, form the most common layout, but there may be more or less. Pin layout may be a diamond, or something else entirely. You might have to knock down all the pins in any order, or just some of the pins, or perhaps knock some down in a specific order and others not at all. Pins may be numbered, with only certain numbers qualifying for scoring. The thrown object maybe a heavy disc, or a solid ball, or a smaller solid ball, or a half a ball, or a barrel-shaped object, or a log. In some games you must roll the cheese and it can never bounce, while in others you need to bounce it once.

A set of instructions from 1786 shows a skittle-ground layout measuring about 17 yards by 4 yards. In this early depiction, the player needs to roll the ball along a narrow wooden plank, curving it to meet the pins without ever hitting the side boards. This is followed by a second throw, called “tipping,” performed directly adjacent to the pin layout. The player “tips,” or drops, the ball onto the layout, attempting to knock down a specific number of pins. He doesn’t score at all if he exceeds or does not meeting this number.

One remarkable version, called half bowl, involves rolling … yes, you guessed it: half a ball. Played where space is limited, half bowl uses twelve pins set in tight circle. Nine pins comprise the circle itself, one pin is at the center, and two more pins project outside of the circle in a straight line. The trick is to roll the half-ball around the two projecting pins and knock down the circle pins from the other side. Since the half-ball rolls on an extreme bias, the trick is to curve each throw just right so the pins are hit from the far side of the configuration.

In fact, the extreme rolling bias of almost all skittle cheeses is one of the key elements of the game. Balls are rarely perfectly formed, and they don’t have finger holes like conventional bowling balls. Some are remarkably heavy, weighing over 15 pounds. They don’t roll nice and straight. They can wobble and slide and do all kinds of things that would make a ten-pin bowler red with rage. Learning the bias of each ball is vital to mastering the game.

There have been dozens (perhaps hundreds) of versions of skittles, and some of them remain a mystery. We only know a few things about a skittles-style game called “closh.” It was probably like skittles, it was very popular, and it was widespread enough that special greens—called closh-banes—were constructed for its playing. We also know that it was banned repeatedly by the government beginning with Kind Edward IV in 1477, and seems to have been wiped out by the 17th century.

A cousin of closh was a game called kyles, which was a type of skittles played with a stick rather than a ball. It may have been played with nine pins arranged in a straight line, which would make them devilish hard to knock down. Recorded as early as 1325, it, too, fell to the ban of 1477.

There is also a large class of games called table skittles, which takes several forms. The most common version features a ball hanging from a chain or rope attached to a pole, much like a tetherball. The pins are laid out on a raised platform, and the player swings the ball in an attempt to knock down as many pins as possible, with all the expected regional scoring variants. It’s also called Devil Among the Tailors, with the devil being the ball and the tailors being the pins. (There are a few different origin stories for this name. None of them are plausible.)

Another version of table skittles is “hood skittles,” or “daddlums.” These games are distinguished by their unique tables, with hood skittles played on a low table with padded uprights on three sides, and daddlums played on a smaller table with a slightly different configuration. In either version, nine pins are set in a classic diamond pattern. Players stand a certain distance away from the table, and toss small, hand-sized cheeses in attempt to knock down the pins.

In the 1970s, Aurora/Marx marketed a large and successful line of “skittle” products in the United States. They were heavily promoted by Get Smart actor Don Adams, complete with ads and TV commercials that haunt YouTube to this very day. Skittle Bowl (classic table skittles), Skittle Pool, Skittle Poker, Skittle Tic-Tac-Toe, Skittle Bingo, Skittle Scoreball, and Skittle Horseshoes all used the standard “ball dangling from a stick” mechanic.

Is that Uncle Leo in the background?

Dwile Flonking: More Fun With Beer

In 1967, an ancient pub game was brought back into the light, complete with the discovery of an old text—the Wavenly Rules of 1585—to bolster its legitimacy. Dwile flonking had been played since the 16th century at least, and now was at last returned to its rightful place among the regular pub games of Suffolk.

Except that it was all hoax. The game was invented in 1967 in an attempt to draw attention to a village fete in Beccles, Suffolk. Creators Andrew Leverett and Bob Devereux created the imaginary “Wavenly Rules” with plenty of pseudo-old-English terms and traditions to give it a veneer of age. Despite these dodgey origins, dwile flonking actually caught on and became an actual tradition. After more than 40 years of continuous play it can be considered “aged” if not “ancient.”

In dwile flonking, a group of festive drunks link arms and dance in a circle to traditional music. At the center of the circle is a bucket of beer. Inside the bucket is a beer-drenched rag and a stick. Outside the bucket is another drunk, called the flonker. The circle begins moving counter-clockwise at the referee’s command of “Here y’is t’gether,” while the flonker turns in the opposite direction. The flonker lifts up the dripping rag with his stick and flings it at the circle, attempting to nail someone with several ounces of warm, flat beer.

Different hits score different points. A head shot (or “wonton”) is worth three points, while a torso hit (or “morther”) is worth two and a leg (or “ripper”) is worth one. A flonker gets two or three tries, but if he misses all three he has to gulp a pot of ale in the time it takes to pass the dwile all the way around the circle. If he can’t finish in time, he looses a point.

The game has plenty of colorful terminology to go with it. The stick is called a “driveller,” or sometimes a “swadger” (provided by a “swadge-coper” sold by the “tardwainer’s nard”). The circle is called a “girter” and the referee is a “jobanowl.” Other people call the whole thing “nurdling” rather than “dwile flonking.” Of course, there is a Waveney Valley Dwile Flonking Association, as well as competitions.

You can watch a Pathe News reel about dwile flonking here, and a more recent video below.