Ladder toss
American throwing game
Ladder toss is a lawn game played by throwing bolas (two balls connected by a string) onto a ladder.
History
A "ball and ladder game" was patented in 2002 by Pennsylvanian Robert G. Reid, a postman who had played the game with his family for decades before deciding to file for patent in November, 1999. The game is reported as having been played on Escapees campgrounds in the United States in the late 1990s. Some origin stories speculate that the bola is a stand-in for a live snake, which cowboys in the western United States or caballeros in Mexico would throw at fences or branches for points.
Reid sold his patent to Ladder Golf LLC, recorded in the patent office in March 2005, and the company began manufacturing the game commercially. The company sponsored a tournament in San Diego in April, 2005, featuring 32 teams.
Etymology
Being a relatively new and grassroots game, it goes by many names. Some of these names are "Läderbölen" (English: "Ladder Ball"), "Bälle auf der Linie" (English: "Balls on the Line"), "Lasso Golf", "North Dakota Golf", "Norwegian Golf", "Dangle Ball", "Balls on Bars", "Hillbilly Golf", "Testicle Toss", "Balls-a-Danglin", "Polish Golf", and many others. There is also a patented version of the game called Ladder Golf.
Rules
The items needed to play are two ladders and a set of three bolas per team.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ladder toss” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.