Schinag-O-Blog: Bowling vs. Bowling

So, when I say "bowling," apparently I mean "10-pin bowling." Who knew? Here in New England, when you say "bowling," you mean "candlepin bowling." What on earth is candlepin bowling you ask? I went for the first time this past weekend. Let me tell you what I learned.

First, I have to explain that I don't understand all of it. I went as part of a birthday party, so no one had the time to describe every detail and rule to me. But I got the gist.

First of all, the bowling ball is small! It is slightly larger than a ski-ball ball. In fact, candlepin bowling reminded me a lot of ski-ball.

The ball doesn't have holes or anything. You just palm it and roll!

Next, the pins are, well, like candles! Taller than the pins I'm used to, and much, much skinnier.

This, I discovered, led to several interesting tidbits. First of all, there is a lot more space between the pins. The pins are much less likely to knock each other down. For me, in what I consider "regular" bowling, the perfect roll lands the ball between the 1 and 3 pins. In candlepin bowling, a ball hitting the 1 and 3 pins will maybe knock down a pin or two. Argh!

Second, the pin setter does NOT clear the fallen pins between each roll.

The pins just lay there. Sometimes this is great! One time, I knocked down a pin that laid right in front of two other pins. On my next roll, I hit that pin and it knocked over both the upright pins behind it! This is called "using the wood," which sounds pornographic, I know. However sometimes these fallen pins get in the way and are a real pain in the butt.

Another odd thing is that you get three rolls per frame in candlepin bowling. A strike is if you knock all of the pins down in two turns. A spare is if you knock them all down in three turns.

Finally, you have to work a lot harder to keep score in candlepin bowling. "Regular" bowling has gotten so high tech that once you enter your name, the computer does all the work. Not so here! First, you have to tell the lane when your turn is over. You hit a button by the ball return.

It doesn't recognize when you have taken your three rolls.

Second, you have to enter your total score per frame. This required a lot of peering at the pins from different angles to figure out which ones were still standing.