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( Table shuffleboard)
Table shuffleboard (also known as American shuffleboard or indoor shuffleboard or Shufflepuck) is a game in which players push metal-and-plastic weighted pucks (also called weights) down a long and smooth wooden table into a scoring area at the opposite end of the table. Shooting is performed with the hand directly, as opposed to deck shuffleboard's use of cue sticks Back in 15th Century England, folks played a game of sliding a "great" (a large British coin of the day worth about four pence) down a table. The game was called shove-groat and/or slide-groat. Later, a silver penny was used and the name of the game became shove-penny and/or shovel-penny. The game was played by the young and old, and was a favorite pastime in the great country houses of Staffordshire, Winchester and Wiltshire. Shuffleboard was popular among the English soldiers as well as the colonists. In his play, "The Crucible," concerning the historic witch trials of Salem, Mass., Arthur Miller wrote "In 1692, there was a good supply of ne'er-do-wells who dallied at the shuffleboard in Bridget Bishop's Tavern." That item provides a written record of the entrance of the game into the New World. The fame of the game spread, and soon it came upon the public scene in more ways than one. In 1848, in New Hanover, Pennsylvania, a case of "The State vs. John Bishop" to decide the question, "Is shuffle- board a game of chance or a game of skill?" came up for trial. The judge ruled thus "Though the defendant kept a public gaming table, as charged, and though diverse persons played thereat and bet spirituous liquors on the game, the game was not a game of chance, but was altogether a game of skill." The game shed its crude beginnings when American cabinetmakers such as Hepplewhite and Duncan Phyfe turned out some of their finest inlaid cabinet work on shuffleboard game tables for the wealthy homes of New York City.
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