Half an hour was all it took to convert me into a Crokinole pervert

I was aware of Crokinole, of course. Anyone wading through the sea of fold-out tables that stretch across convention floors has, at the very least, spied the rounded wooden boards and the excitable people crowded around them. They fling little wooden disks and exult at their collisions. There is sand (or something like it) covering the outside gutter, the board, the players’ fingers. Black lines cut the play space into zones unadorned with any numbers or colors. Scoring apparently happens at some point.

You might have considered it a weird version of shuffleboard, or maybe darts with the target laid flat. You might have raised an eyebrow at the sheer popularity of it—every Crokinole spot at PAX Unplugged’s 2024 convention was nearly always occupied. You might have dismissed it as an aberrant trend; how else to explain something that would fit next to your grandmother’s backgammon table amidst the rainbow glitz of modern tabletop games? I certainly did until I sat down at a board for the first time. Within 30 minutes, a universe of understanding unfolded in front of me.

I owe you an apology, Crokinole. I wasn’t really familiar with your game.