How to Play American Backyard Croquet

There are four standardized games in the croquet canon: American Backyard (a.k.a. Nine Wicket), American, and Poison. I will define each game-focusing on the easiest one to explain to a bunch of mosquito-bit partygoers looking for a good time, American Backyard Croquet.

But first, a little history of the game: According to several sources, we should all raise our mallets & wiry wickets to some inventive French peasants of the 14th century who turned wood and tree branches into the game we know today as croquet. They made their mallets and balls out of wood and their wickets from flexible willow branches. Hundreds of years later, an Irish woman on holiday in France is said to have brought the game back with her after watching peasants play it. Around the 1830s the game spread into England where it quickly became a favorite, especially among those pale, corseted women who jumped at the chance to play a game outdoors. Once the feature of sending off your opponent's ball by hitting yours against theirs was added to the game, couples enjoyed searching for lost balls together in the woods. By 1870, almost every area under British colonial rule was playing croquet. By then it had been introduced to America, and we quickly started to change some of its traditional house rules. Instead of playing on a trimmed grass course, we stuck our wickets in our own backyards. Which now leads me to explain the rules of American Backyard croquet . . .

American Backyard or Nine Wicket Croquet uses ten, oh wait, no, nine wickets in a pattern "shaped like two diamonds with the center wicket as the connecting point between the two diamonds" (www.playcroquet.com, see "American Backyard diagram"). Wickets are the either horseshoe- or rectangular- shaped "mini goals" which your ball must pass through in order to complete the game. At both ends of the playing field you must place a striking stake, a small wood stick usually resembling the mallets (what you hit the balls with). Two wickets, with one in front of the other, will then be placed in front of the stakes.