PENCIL POINT DARTS

Unless you happen to carry a dart-board around on all your trips, you won't be able to play real darts. But you can play this version of it — without having to throw anything.

First of all you need a sheet of paper on which to draw your miniature dart-board. In the middle, draw a circle about 5 inches (13 mm) across. See if you can find something circular — a tin, a cup or a plate — to draw round. If not, you'll have to do it free-hand.

A proper board is difficult to copy, what with twenty segments, doubles, trebles and so on. So the diagram shows a simplified version.

Each segment is marked with its value. The narrow outer ring counts as double, and the black centre is the bull, worth 25.

You are now ready to play. The first player holds up a pencil, shuts his eyes tight, and stabs gently at the board. (Put an old newspaper or similar under the paper so that you don't stab yourself by mistake!) He scores according to which segment the pencil lands in. After three stabs, he counts up his score and hands the pencil on to the next player.

The game can be decided in many ways. The simplest is to keep on taking turns until someone reaches a total of

100 to win. Another is called 101, in which you count backwards. The aim of this is to get your score down from 101 to exactly 0. If, for example, you have got down to 6 and you score 8, then that's no good. You must wait until you score 6 — or less. If you only score 5, you will have to wait until you get a 1.

Back to Drawing Games Menu