Indoor and outdoor games involving tossing skill are easy to assemble from ordinary household equipment. While two or more contestants will prolong interest in the game, the ultimate boredom of a single player can often be anticipated by lengthening the distance to the target, changing its angle, its values, or the size of the missiles or "shooters." A partial list of hasty expedients follow; the various values assigned can be marked with chalk, crayon, or cutout figures from large calendars.

1. A series of graduated mixing bowls, one inside the other to form concentric circles as the target for dried beans, buttons, golf tees, small corks, or other small and relatively soft "throwers." Alternatively, the bowls can be clustered around the smallest one to which is assigned the largest bonus for scoring. Heavy cups can be arranged in the same manner.

2. Cooking pots of diminishing size can be arranged in the same way, or butted against each other in a vertical line toward the player. Bean-bags and old tennis or other soft balls make good shooters.

3. Cardboard egg containers can be marked with crayon and will hold marbles, ping-pong balls, pennies and buttons.

4. Muffin tins make ideally prefabricated targets for soft (noiseless) balls.

5. A flat piece of wrapping paper can be marked with crayon into squares, concentric circles, or segments radiating from the center to form any number of games, from simple large squares for youthful contestants, to horizontal dart or baseball scores for older players. Pennies, metal washers, pushouts from electric outlet boxes, checkers, tiddlywinks, cardboard plywood or linoleum disks, and bottle caps make satisfactory throwing disks.

6. A checkerboard placed flat on the floor with numbers chalked in its squares makes a quick, and fairly complicated tossing game. Scoring can be varied by announcing all red squares as plus and the black ones as minus the values assigned to them. Any predetermined number of the checkers can be tossed by each player, or players may be required to hit each of their own colored squares in rotation as they are numbered. Certain squares can be assessed with various penalties as in Parchesi. For example, all squares marked X cause the player to lose a turn; any marked B force the player to return to No. 1; those marked G permit him to skip the next number; an opponent who lands in the same square as another player, forces him to start over, or lose two turns, or go back three squares. And so on.

Cards In The Hat

Popularized during the twenties as a parlor game for grownups, the flipping of single playing cards into a wide-mouthed receptacle requires a skill and concentration which will interest younger players when conditions are arranged so that there is some prospect of fair success. Instead of a hat, an opened umbrella, upsidedown, will offer a larger target for beginners. Later a cardboard carton or wastebasket can be substituted. If the target is placed at a reasonable distance from a sofa or chair, and each contestant required to maintain full contact at all times with the seat, many disputes concerning illegal reaching will be avoided.

Cork Toss

If there is a box of corks of assorted sizes and shapes on hand, a simple game which requires a minimum of preparation, but a maximum of dexterity and eye-hand coordination on the part of the players, can be speedily improvised from the most meager equipment. The target can be almost any available container such as a wastebasket, tin pail, cardboard carton, or muffin tin. The distance from the taw or balk line to the target must of course be commensurate with the average player's reach.

The greater the variety and sizes of the corks, the more surprising will be the change of pace required to toss them accurately. Needless to say, the larger the target, the farther away the throwing line should be located. It should be moved up closer for a series or cluster of targets such as flowerpots, china cups, jelly glasses, or a cardboard egg carton. These can be marked with chalk or pasted numbers with the highest values assigned to the center target. To reverse the policy, place a black or red disk of paper in the bottom of the center target and allot a suitable penalty to it.

If the game proves popular, a target which can be tilted upright at a 45 degree angle can be cut out of cardboard or wallboard and marked and colored like a bean-bag target.