The traditional game of quoits has a long and venerable history. The full game is played outdoors using iron or steel quoits that are thrown at metal pins embedded in beds of soft clay. Although a beginner will always aim for a "ringer", the game is very tactical and a ringer is not always the best shot - expert players will often attempt to "cover" the pin with a the top of a quoit sticking out of the clay or will occasionally deliberately flip an opponent's quoit out of the way. Two versions of traditional outdoor quoits are played - "The Northern Game" played in the North of England and "The Long Game" played in Scotland, Wales and North Suffolk, England.

Rather like Skittles, quoits takes a lot of space and additionally is too messy to play during winter. Enter the indoor version of the game that has been thriving around the Welsh/English border for many years. Known as indoor quoits, Evesham quoits, Table quoits or Dobbers, the game is thought to have been invented around the end of the nineteenth century and it is a very cleverly miniaturised version of the outdoor quoits game which is most enjoyable to play. The game uses flat rubber rings and to make up for their lack of shape, one side is coloured black, the other white and any quoit which falls black side up, doesn't score.

The square quoits board features a central stake and two indented concentric rings. The scores of the stake, and the two rings vary according to the location and the game being played - rather like Darts, it seems that more than one game is played using the same equipment. The standard game would just be a straight race to the final score of 61 points (scored on a cribbage board) but, in Powys particularly, an interesting variant using a special scoreboard is very popular in which each number up to 13 can only be scored once by the first player who manages to score that number in a turn.

You can learn more about the history of quoits from The Online Guide to Traditional Games.