Gaming origins of --
Draw the line: A game which was the ancestor of tennis involved hitting a ball back and forth across a net, using the players' hands rather than rackets. There were no established courts or play area dimensions, so the game was played on any ol' flat area, across which the players stretched the net. Each player then stepped an agreed distance from the net and drew a line which was the back boundary. From that practice came the concept of "drawing the line" to mean a limit of any kind. (Except: Charles Funk says it arises from the cut of a plowshare across a field to indicate the limit of one's holding)
Ducks in a row: from an ancestor of ten-pin bowling, in which the pins were short and slender, and called duckpins. Setting the pins in rows for the game lead to the meaning of a task completed for "ducks in a row."
Rush pell-mell: Borrowed by the English from the French, the game of pall-mall involved driving a boxwood ball with a mallett, in an attempt to knock the ball through a ring suspended at the end of a long playing surface. The site of one of the playing areas in London became Pall Mall Street. Because Pall Mall was a center of club life and major business houses, the street was always in confusion. Those who hurry about as if bustling along on Pall Mall (pronounced pellmell) came to be rushing pell-mell.
Kingpin: Germans developed a game in which wooden pins formed the target for a rolling ball. The nine pins included one larger than the others, the king pin, which was sometimes decorated with a crown. (The game was altered by the Dutch, which made all the pins uniform and added a tenth to avoid anti-bowling laws) The label "kingpin" survives to apply to one who plays a leading role in an organization. Around here, you are liable to hear it in reference to organized crime.
Open and shut: From Faro, which was highly popular in the 1850s. Standard play of the era included numerous complicated ways to place and raise bets, but to encourage newbies a gambling hall operator simplified the game, and in the simplified version the pot was closed very soon after having been opened. Veterans of the game preferred the older version, and disdained open and shut play. The expression migrated from the gaming tables to name any uncomplicated situation.
Source: Why You Say It, Webb Garrison.
