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Today a friend mentioned playing carom. Now--when I was a child, I was told that carom was another name for what I grew up playing as crokinole. (Pronounced CROAK-ih-nole.) My cousin had it. It consisted of a hexagonal (I think) flat wooden board, with 3 or 4 concentric circles marked off, and there was a slight circular depression at the very center. Spaced around the smallest circle were some short posts. Each of 2 players had thick wooden disks, which you thumped from the edge of the board. The most points were gained when your disk settled into the depression (which is why the posts guarded it), and if you got yours in there you had to just hope that your opponent was unsuccessful at knocking it out. Since the board and "men" already appeared well-used in 1960, that tells me the game was older than that--probably by at least a couple of decades.
My question: has anybody here even heard the word crokinole? I played it in Tennessee, and none of my Louisville friends knew of it.
They also had part of an old card game, and to my frustration the instructions had been lost: Logomachy.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Jackie I remember a square game board about the size of a card table, with pockets in
each corner, and markings for several games, on both sides of the board. The carom game had
wooden rings big enough to fit over a finger, and carom meant to strike another piece and bounce
off in an advantageous manner, but I cannot remember the rules or scoring.
It also had tddly-winks, things like poker chips that were made to jump by pressing edge of one
lying on the table with another. I can't rember any rules or scoring for that one either. We also
had a double set of Mah-jongg, with hundreds of little bone sticks with dots indicating value. We used
the pieces of bamboo faced with bone with figures carved in them by standing long rows of them on the
carpet (better than dominoes). There was no TV or radio in those days. Parents played bridge, and
poker. How things have changed.
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Never heard of crokinole, Jackie. But from what you say it appears to be quite different from Carom (at least as I know it).
A Carom board is a square, highly polished, wooden board with holes in all four corners that have small collection baskets tagged on underneath. The centre of the board is marked for a solitary red disc and eighteen white and black (nine each) are arranged in an alternating fashion in concentric circles. Either two or four players can play. Each player shoots a disc (called a striker), in turns, at the central arrangement of discs, with the aim of landing them in the corner holes. Whoever gets the maximum number of discs in, wins. Red scores highest, followed by white and then black.
Have you played this?
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Maahey - that is exactly the game I know as carom. When my father's family fled Partition in 1948, they brought an already far-from-new carom board with them, and I grew up being suitably impressed by my father's (to my eyes) dazzling skill at the game. I once googled carom, and found photos of a tournament somewhere in NJ (hi, Juan) - a room full of carom boards and not a single person who wasn't obviously from the subcontinent. This confirmed what my father had told us about the pasion for the game there.
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Crokinole - cool word, Jackie.
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sjm, do you know then, if this game originated in India or is it another remnant of the Raj?
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sjm, do you know then, if this game originated in India or is it another remnant of the Raj?
My guess is the latter - the name is not even remotely Indian.
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Sorry, Toots, I only know Crokinole as the back of the Carrom® board. Mine was square (rounded corners in 1948 but square in the newer/cheaper version), with pockets in the corners and twenty-four black and white rings (twelve each) to be propelled by snapping them with your finger, and a checkerboard in the middle and a backgammon board around the edges (as long as there was space for them anyway). And the Crokinole board on the back, pretty much as you described it. It came with an instrucition book describing about eighty-four different games that could be played.
It's still available with a little searching. I got my "new" one twenty-five years ago and a whole set of rings and stuff fifteen years ago, and my (thirty-year-old) son got his own five years ago, to play with his own children.
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Wofa, I think you're about the only person I'd let call me Toots and not mind it... :-) I am relieved that ONE person has heard of this game. You inspired me to Google again; I'd tried when I was making the post, but googling under Games came up a blank. I just tried the non-specific way, and oh my gosh--paydirt! One place sells crokinole boards for anywhere from $90 to $700 (making me want to call Ben and see if he still has it!) This place said it was Developed in Canada during the mid-1860s . http://www.frontiernet.net/~crokinol/faq.htm says it isn't known just when or where it was invented, but said there is a strong association with Mennonites. (!) Here's something that might interest you German-speakers: The Mennonites have their own cultural name for the game, Knipsbrett (the "K" is pronounced), believed to be a Low German word meaning "snap-board," but unknown in contemporary German.
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maahey: sjm, do you know then, if this game originated in India or is it another remnant of the Raj?
sjm: My guess is the latter - the name is not even remotely Indian.
Here in Indonesia it's known as kerambol. It's not as popular as it used to be, but still well known. I was told at one point that it originated from N. Africa, but I have my doubts about my informant's reliability.
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