Maribeth Hendricks, age 13, of Utica, N.Y., for her question:
HOW LONG IS A SHUFFLEBOARD COURT?
A shuffleboard court is 52 feet long and six feet wide. One end is called the head of the court and the other is called the foot of the court.
You play the game of shuffleboard with disks made of wood or steel encased in plastic. The disks are six inches in diameter and one inch thick. Players use sticks called cues to shove the disks from the head of the court to the foot. The sticks are 6 feet 3 inches long and have one end made to fit the disk.
Experts say that a game something like shuffleboard was played in the 13th Century. At that time, the long wooden cues were shaped very much like shovels. The game, therefore, was at first known as shovel board.
We don't have any record of when the game was introduced in the United States, but it became popular as a deck activity on ocean liners during the 19th Century.
The land shuffleboard game that we know today was introduced in Daytona, Fla., in 1913 by the owners of a hotel. They marked out a court on a sidewalk and discovered that the guests enjoyed the game very much.
Today's rules call for a smooth concrete or terrazzo court. A scoring section is marked at each end. The scoring spots are triangles that are divided into sections. Each section represents a different score. There is one spot worth 10 points, two spots worth eight points each, two worth seven points and one area that takes 10 points off a player's score.
A set of disks usually has four that are black and four that are red.
Two players, called singles, or four players, called doubles, can play shuffleboard. The object is simple enough: to score points and also prevent your opponent from scoring. You do this by shoving the disks with your clue from the playing area to the scoring area. First you shove one disk, and then your opponent shoves one disk. You try to land in a scoring area, and at the same time you try to bump away the opponents' scoring disks.
When all of the disks have been shoved from the head of the court to the foot, the score is noted by totaling the numbers of the scoring sections in which a player's disk is placed.
If a player's disk bumps his opponent's disk from a scoring position into the section marked 10 off, then 10 points is taken off the opponent's score.
A disk that touches a line doesn't score. In order to make a score, the disk must be clearly in the scoring section.
After the score is recorded, the players continue the game by shooting from the other end of the court.
The player with the black disks always shoots first.
The game can end when the score hits 50, 75 or 100. Before the game starts, the players decide which final score to use. In doubles, the partners shoot from opposite ends of the court.