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Lorena Smalley

Crokinole…we want to offer it here at our centre!  Do you want to Play?  Please complete our poll!

 

HISTORY OF CROKINOLE – Did you know Crokinole was invented in the late 19th century in southern Ontario?

The first crokinole board was built by Eckhardt Wettlaufer in 1876 in Sebastopol, Ontario. Wettlaufer was a woodworker and wagon-maker and made the board as a birthday gift for his son. The relic currently hangs in the Joseph Schneider Haus Museum in Kitchener, ON.  It is unclear where Wettlaufer got the idea from the game, but it’s likely that it is derived from the Asian game of carroms by way of British colonists. Carroms is also the ancestor, purportedly, of pocket pool, knips-brat, and pichenotte (associated with Quebec). The name “crokinole” is derived from the French ‘croquignole’ which means ‘flick’ or ‘small biscuit’.

Before long, the game caught on and was being distributed commercially by mail-order giants such as Sears-Roebuck and Montgomery Ward and Co.. Crokinole soon became one of the  most popular games in North America. It was very popular in particular with Mennonite and Amish groups, as the game had none of the shady associations of billiards or card-playing. The Montgomery Ward Catalogue refers to this squeaky-clean image when it describes crokinole as “a new and intensely interesting game for everybody, with no objectionable features.”

 

HOW TO PLAY CROKINOLE

Crokinole is a very easy game to learn, and this guide can get you started.  In a two-player game, each player gets twelve discs (“biscuits”) of one of two colours (often red and black).

We found this youtube video that shows how to play Crokinole!  Take a peek!

 

 

 

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