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Skill games

Popular in this category (44)

Hobbies

Carrom

Carrom is a cue sport-inspired tabletop game of South Asian origin. The game is very popular in Afghanistan, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and surrounding areas, and is known by various names in different languages. In South Asia, many clubs and cafés hold regular tournaments. Carrom is very commonly played by families, including children, and at social functions. Different standards and rules exist in different areas.

Hobbies

Bowling

Bowling is a sport or leisure activity in which a player rolls or throws a bowling ball towards a target. It is one of the major forms of throwing sports. In pin bowling variations, the target is usually to knock over pins at the end of a lane. A strike is when all the pins are knocked down on the first roll, whereas a spare is when all the pins are knocked over on the second shot. The maximum score is 300, which is achieved by getting 12 strikes in a row. Three consecutive strikes is known as a "turkey". Further strings of strikes are referred to as the number with the word "bagger", such as "four-bagger" for four consecutive strikes. The term "hambone" has also been used to describe four consecutive strikes. In target variations, the aim is usually to get the ball as close to a mark as possible. The pin version of bowling is often played on a flat wooden or other synthetic surface, while in target bowling, the surface may be grass, gravel or a synthetic surface. The most common types of pin bowling include ten-pin, nine-pin, candlepin, duckpin and five-pin bowling, while in target bowling, bowls, skittles, kegel, bocce, carpet bowls, pétanque, and boules, both indoor and outdoor varieties are popular. Today the sport of bowling is played by 100 million people in more than 90 countries worldwide, and continues to grow through entertainment media such as video games for home consoles and handheld devices.

Hobbies

Darts

Darts is a sport in which small missiles/torpedoes/arrows/darts are thrown at a circular dartboard fixed to a wall. Though various boards and rules have been used in the past, the term "darts" usually now refers to a standardised game involving a specific board design and set of rules. As well as being a professional competitive game, darts is a traditional pub game, commonly played in Britain and Ireland, across the Commonwealth, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, the United States, and elsewhere.

Hobbies

Cornhole

Cornhole or bean bag toss is a lawn game in which players take turns throwing bags of corn at a raised platform with a hole in the far end. A bag in the hole scores 3 points, while one on the platform scores 1 point. Play continues until a team or player reaches the score of 21.

Hobbies

Yo-yo

A yo-yo is a toy consisting of an axle connected to two disks, and a string looped around the axle. It has some similarities to a slender spool.

Hobbies

Table football

Table football or table soccer, foosball in North America, is a table-top game that is loosely based on football. The aim of the game is to use the control knobs to move the ball into the opponent’s goal. There are no unified rules for playing the game, in the sense that rules vary in different countries and even in cities, and sometimes between different clubs in the same city.

Hobbies

Shuffleboard

Shuffleboard, more precisely deck shuffleboard, and also known as floor shuffleboard, is a game in which players use cues to push weighted discs, sending them gliding down a narrow court, with the purpose of having them come to rest within a marked scoring area. As a more generic term, it refers to the family of shuffleboard-variant games as a whole.

Hobbies

Crokinole

Crokinole is a dexterity board game similar in various ways to pitchnut, carrom, marbles, and shove ha'penny, with elements of shuffleboard and curling reduced to table-top size. Players take turns shooting discs across the circular playing surface, trying to have their discs land in the higher-scoring regions of the board, while also attempting to knock away opposing discs.

Hobbies

Kendama

The kendama (けん玉, "sword [and] ball") is a traditional Japanese skill toy. The ken has three cups and a spike which fits into the hole in the ball. The kendama is a variant of the classic cup-and-ball game, and the Hispanic world toy known as boliche or balero. The principle of these toys are the same: catching one object with another, where both are joined by a string. However the modern kendama style takes influences from a diverse range of skills including yo-yo, diabolo, and juggling.

Hobbies

Knucklebones

Knucklebones, Tali, Fivestones, or Jacks, is a game of ancient origin, usually played with five small objects, or ten in the case of jacks. Originally the "knucklebones" were those of a sheep, which were thrown up and caught in various manners. Modern knucklebones consist of six points, or knobs, proceeding from a common base, and are usually made of metal or plastic. The winner is the first player to successfully complete a prescribed series of throws, which, though similar, differ widely in detail. The simplest throw consists in either tossing up one stone, the jack, or bouncing a ball, and picking up one or more stones or knucklebones from the table while it is in the air. This continues until all five stones or knucklebones have been picked up. Another throw consists in tossing up first one stone, then two, then three and so on, and catching them on the back of the hand. Different throws have received distinctive names, such as "riding the elephant", "peas in the pod", "horses in the stable", and "frogs in the well".

Hobbies

Poi

Poi refers to both a style of performing art and the equipment used for engaging in poi performance. As a performance art, poi involves swinging tethered weights through a variety of rhythmical and geometric patterns. Poi artists may also sing or dance while swinging their poi. Poi can be made from various materials with different handles, weights, and effects.

Hobbies

Laser tag

Laser tag is a tag game played with guns which fire infrared beams. Infrared-sensitive targets are commonly worn by each player and are sometimes integrated within the arena in which the game is played. Since its birth in 1979, with the release of the Star Trek Electronic Phasers toy manufactured by the South Bend Electronics brand of Milton Bradley, laser tag has evolved into both indoor and outdoor styles of play, and may include simulations of combat, role play-style games, or competitive sporting events including tactical configurations and precise game goals.

Hobbies

Kubb

Kubb is a lawn game where the objective is to knock over wooden blocks (kubbs) by throwing wooden batons (kastpinnar) at them. Kubb can be described as a combination of bowling and horseshoes. Play takes place on a small rectangular playing field, known as a "pitch". "Kubbs" are placed at both ends of the pitch, and the "king", a larger wooden block, is placed in the middle of the pitch. Some rules vary from country to country and from region to region, but the ultimate objective of the game is to knock over the "kubbs" on the opposing side of the pitch, and then to knock over the "king", before the opponent does. Games can last from five minutes to well over an hour. The game can be played on a variety of surfaces such as grass, sand, concrete, snow, or even ice.

Hobbies

Speedcubing

Speedcubing is the sport involving solving a variety of twisty puzzles, the most famous being the Rubik's Cube, as quickly as possible. For most puzzles, solving entails performing a series of moves that alters a scrambled puzzle into a state in which every face of the puzzle is a single, solid color. Some puzzles have different requirements to be considered solved, such as the Clock, for which all the dials must be moved into the 12 'o clock position.

Sports, Hobbies

Boules

Boules is a collective name for a wide range of games similar to bowls and bocce in which the objective is to throw or roll heavy balls as close as possible to a small target ball.