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4.A.3. KAYLES
This has objects in a line or a circle and one can remove one object or two adjacent objects (or more adjacent objects in a generalized version of the game). This derives from earlier games with an array of pins at which one throws a ball or stick.

Murray 442 cites Act 17 of Edward IV, c.3 (1477): "Diversez novelx ymagines jeuez appellez Cloishe Kayles ..." This outlawed such games. A 14C picture is given in [J. A. R. Pimlott; Recreations; Studio Vista, 1968, plate 9, from BM Royal MS 10 E IV f.99] showing a 3 x 3 array of pins. A version is shown in Pieter Bruegel's painting "Children's Games" of 1560 with balls being thrown at a row of pins by a wall, in the back right of the scene. Versions of the game are given in the works of Strutt and Gomme cited in 4.B.1. Gomme II 115 116 discusses it under Roly poly, citing Strutt and some other sources. Strutt 270 271 (= Strutt-Cox 219-220) calls it "Kayles, written also cayles and keiles, derived from the French word quilles". He has redrawings of two 14C engravings (neither that in Pimlott) showing lines of pins at which one throws a stick (= plate opp. 220 in Strutt-Cox). He also says Closh or Cloish seems to be the same game and cites prohibitions of it in c1478 et seq. Loggats was analogous and was prohibited under Henry VIII and is mentioned in Hamlet.

14C MS in the British Museum, Royal Library, No. 2, B. vii. Reproduced in Strutt, p. 271. Shows a monk(?) standing by a line of eight conical pins and another monk(?) throwing a stick at the pins.

Anonymous. Games of the 16th Century. The Rockliff New Project Series. Devised by Arthur B. Allen. The Spacious Days of Queen Elizabeth. Background Book No. 5. Rockliff Publishing, London, ©1950, 4th ptg. The Background Books seem to be consecutively paginated as this booklet is paginated 129-152. Pp. 133-134 describes loggats, quoting Hamlet and an unknown poet of 1611. P. 137 is a photograph of the above 14C illustration. The caption is "Skittles, or "Kayals", and Throwing a Whirling Stick".

van Etten. 1624. Prob. 72 (misnumbered 58) (65), pp 68 69 (97 98): Du jeu des quilles (Of the play at Keyles or Nine-Pins). Describes the game as a kind of ninepins.

Loyd. Problem 43: The daisy game. Tit Bits 32 (17 Jul & 7 Aug 1897) 291 & 349. (= Cyclopedia. 1914. A daisy puzzle game, pp. 85 & 350. c= MPSL2, prob. 57, pp. 40 41 & 140. c= SLAHP: The daisy game, pp. 42 & 99.) Circular version of Kayles with 13 objects. See also 4.A.2.

Dudeney. Sharpshooters puzzle. Problem 430. Weekly Dispatch (26 Jan, 9 Feb, 1902) both p. 13. Simple version of Kayles.

Ball. MRE, 4th ed., 1905, pp. 19-20. Cites Loyd in Tit Bits. Gives the general version: place p counters in a circle and one can take not more than m adjacent ones.

Dudeney. CP. 1907. Prob. 73: The game of Kayles, pp. 118 119 & 220. Kayles with 13 objects.

Loyd. Cyclopedia. 1914. Rip van Winkle puzzle, pp. 232 & 369 370. (c= MPSL2, prob. 6, pp. 5 & 122.) Linear version with 13 pins and the second knocked down. Gardner asserts that Dudeney invented Kayles, but it seems to be an abstraction from the old form of the game.

Rohrbough. Puzzle Craft, later version, 1940s?. Daisy Game, p. 22. Kayles with 13 petals of a daisy.

Philip Kaplan. More Posers. (Harper & Row, 1964); Macfadden-Bartell Books, 1965. Prob. 45, pp. 48 & 95. Circular kayles with five objects.

Doubleday - 2. 1971. Take your pick, pp. 63-65. This is Kayles with a row of 10, but he says the first player can only take one.