Cornhole!

Welcome, confused reader, as I take you on a journey into what I can only describe as American pub games. In the UK, we have a long tradition of pub games, some of which are relatively simple (darts), some of which have needless complexity (bar billiards), and some of which are plain indecipherable (the Oxfordshire local pastime of Aunt Sally).

And so it was that we happened upon cornhole. I discovered the game of cornhole one morning, when I stayed tuned into ESPN2 long after some Grand Prix or other had finished. Obviously, European Grands Prix happen pretty early in the morning here, so what's shown on TV immediately after isn't what you'd describe as prime-time entertainment. Fulfilling all the stereotypes you might wish for, I found myself watching the inhabitants of the proud Southern states of this country throwing bean bags at wooden boards.

And that, dear reader, is cornhole in a nutshell. Or perhaps a grain husk.

Why 'corn' hole? Apparently the bags are filled with corn or maize kernels. At 1lb (that's 454g in more enlightened units), those bags are surprisingly heavy and hard to throw over a long distance. For official cornhole, you need to throw the bags 27 feet, a number which doesn't really make sense in any unit (although I guess it is the literal whole 9 yards - see what I did there?), targetting a board which is about 4 feet by 2 feet, with a 6 inch hole in the top. The board is inclined, and a big part of the game (assuming you actually hit the board) is sliding the bags appropriately to either go in the hole, or block your opponent.

This is the US, so the sport is taken surprisingly seriously, and having seen it in action I just had to have a go. As we made a resolution to embrace all things American towards the end of last year, I just had to buy Helen a set of cornhole boards, and matching stars-and-stripes bags, for Christmas.

Surprisingly, on the couple of times we've played this I've found that Helen is remarkably focussed on winning. Unsurprisingly, she's quite a lot better at the game than me. Just to break the fourth wall for a second, in preparation for this blog we prepared a couple of videos, one of Helen throwing her four bags at the board, and one of me. My efforts were so grim, dear reader, that I dare not make them public. Helen, however, displays her natural talent right here:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/b4ccc2_f39e67df310240699ed0c1406fe7e546/360p/mp4/file.mp4

The game is deceptively difficult - turns out it's a long way to throw, and there's a lot of stuff around the aerodynamics of the bags in flight which can make it hard to be accurate. It's also all too easy for the bags to hit the board and then skate off.

When we pick these things up we have a habit of saying, "This will be cool when we go back to the UK - we'll be the only people there with a cornhole board" - so if you're liking the look of this, we challenge you to take us on when we make the move back!