Table skittles is a game in which a ball or spinning top is used to knock over skittles on a small board, usually placed on a table. Table skittles are almost always made of wood. Overview Table skittles are often a small scale imitation of normal skittles (e.g. in terms of the size of lanes, skittles, balls), and like minigolf, some are considered a children's version of it. There are different forms of tables skittles: Devil Among the Tailors. A traditional English pub game dating from the 18th century. A simple table skittles games has a string with a small skittle ball attached to a gallows-like post. When the ball is struck it swings in a circle or back and forth. A player's score is based on the skittles knocked over in each turn. In some games, the fallen skittles are returned to their original position by hand; in others, the skittles are attached to strings and returned to their positions by a mechanism that pulls them. Hood Skittles. A throwing version of table skittles played in English pubs, especially in the counties of Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Bedfordshire. Originally, small circular cheeses were thrown at the 9 skittles. Now leather discs (still called ‘cheeses’) are used and thrown at a table that is specially equipped with padding and a safety net, resembling an armchair. Tischkegel ("Table Skittles"). German and Austrian game in which players spin a top down a slightly sloping board towards nine skittles. Various forms are played in south Germany, the Black Forest, the Tyrol and Upper Austria. Variants include: Tyrolean skittles and Merano skittles. Garmisch skittles. In Garmisch-Partenkirchen a variant is played in which a ball is struck with a stick towards the skittles. Hood skittles In the English Midlands, specifically Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire and east Warwickshire, nine skittles are placed on a hooded table, hence the name "hood skittles". The hood skittles table is leather bound, and has leather- to the sides and the back, with a curved hood of leather or netting stretched up from the rear like a pram, approximately a metre over the of the table. Behind the area where the skittles are laid out in a diamond is a lower surface or trough. The table playing surface stands about 1 metre high and the thrower about 3 metres from the front of the table when in a pub around Leicester or