By Porter Lang
Start with the board, because the board explains the game.
Inside it are three concentric rings worth 5, 10 and 15 points from the outside in, and a shallow hole at the centre worth 20. Eight small bumpers guard the inner ring. A raised edge and a gutter, called the ditch, catch discarded pieces. The discs are wooden, roughly checker-sized, and slightly smaller than the centre hole.
That is the whole kit. Everything else is a flick of the finger.
Reading the playing surface
Each player flicks a disc from the outer edge of their own quadrant towards the centre. Wikipedia describes the common rule: if enemy discs are on the board, your shot has to touch one, or your disc is fouled and removed. With none on the board, many rule sets ask that a disc finish inside or touching the 15 ring. A disc that drops into the 20 hole is removed and scores 20 for its owner.
The same article describes a Muskoka variation. Discs may be shot anywhere, contact is not required, and the opponent gets one chance to knock a disc out of the 20 hole. Scoring there is differential. Only the side with more points gains the difference in each round. So “crokinole” is not one rulebook. Ask which one a club uses.
Wikipedia also mentions powder. Boric acid was once common on boards and is now considered toxic. It says the United Kingdom uses food-grade starch powder, and that the World Crokinole Championships allow only shuffleboard wax applied by the organizers in the ditch.
The oldest board
Here the two sources we read split by a year.
Wikipedia says the earliest known board was made in 1876 by Eckhardt Wettlaufer in Perth County, Ontario, as a fifth birthday gift for his son. The CBC, in a feature on the world championship, calls Wettlaufer’s 1876 board, on display in a museum in Kitchener, the oldest known crokinole artifact and proof of Canadian provenance.
The championship’s own history page says Wettlaufer lived in Sebastopol, Ontario, near Tavistock, and made the board for his son Adam, who was born on 31 December 1871. It concludes the board dates to about 1877. The same page says the family recalled that it hung on a bedroom wall and was “rarely used”, and that it now sits in the Joseph Schneider Haus Museum in Kitchener, in what it calls its Harvest Collection.
The arithmetic is easy to follow. A fifth birthday for a boy born at the end of 1871 falls at the end of 1876. A board finished for it could be called 1876, and one that arrived on the day could just as well be called 1877. Our reading: the dates are not in conflict so much as counting the same event from either side of New Year, but none of the sources says so.
Older than hockey, and not quite from here
The CBC makes the comparison itself. It says crokinole has been played in Canada longer than organized hockey, and gives 1875 in Montréal for the first organized hockey game. It also says a late historian of the game, in The Crokinole Book, describes a game of the same name played in Ontario farmhouses as far back as 1867. Wikipedia agrees the earliest Canadian reference is from 1867.
The origins are not purely Canadian in every account. Wikipedia says the name probably comes from the French Canadian croquignole, a flick or fillip, and that carrom, a British and South Asian game, is the most likely antecedent. The CBC says carrom developed in India in the mid-1800s and is played on a square board.
Why Tavistock
The CBC says the world championship is held in Tavistock, Ontario, about 50 kilometres from Kitchener, near “the spiritual heartland” of the game. The CBC also reports that the 2025 championship sold out months ahead with 400 players, which its organizer called an all-time record, and that competitors came from countries including Japan, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Hungary.
The CBC adds that the world’s oldest continuously running crokinole club is in St. Jacobs, Ontario, and that tournament boards are made at a family shop in nearby Elmira. We name no individual players or board makers here.
Dates in order
- 1867 (Wikipedia, CBC): earliest Canadian references to the game.
- 1875 (CBC): first organized hockey game, in Montréal.
- 1876 or about 1877 (Wikipedia and CBC; championship history page): the Wettlaufer board.
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia, which anyone can edit. A national broadcaster’s feature article. The tournament organizers’ own history page, a producer describing itself. We read no museum catalogue entry for the board.
What we left out
Prices of boards and any ranking of makers. The names of living champions. Board wood species and finishes, which none of our sources stated. Any claim about skill or health benefits.
Quick answers
Where is the oldest known crokinole board? The tournament’s history page says it is at the Joseph Schneider Haus Museum in Kitchener, Ontario. The CBC dates it to 1876; the tournament page says about 1877.
Where is the world championship held? The CBC says the world championship is held in Tavistock, Ontario.
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Roam first. Shop later.