American carrom

American carrom is an alternative on carrom derived in America by missionaries to the East, around 1890. Believing that the game required restructuring for Western tastes, a Sunday school teacher named Henry Haskell altered the game. Much of the game is the same, but the striker's weight is reduced and the carrom men are smaller. Generally, instead of disks of solid wood, ivory, or acrylic, carrom men are rings, originally of wood but today commercially made of light plastic. In addition, as an alternative to using the fingers to flick the striker,American carrom uses miniature cue sticks. American carrom boards also have pockets built into the corners, rather than circular holes in the board, to make pocketing easier. While traditionally made boards vary widely, current commercially-produced American carrom boards are 28 inches square, are printed with checkerboard and backgammon patterns, among others, and are sold with checkers, chess pieces, skittles, etc., to allow other games to be played on the same board. Often, these boards are also built to play crokinole.