For many years, at the annual Weirdo Party (held on the first Saturday after the first Monday of September every year since 1989), we have played the Finnish yard game Mölkky in Central Park once a year. In the early days of the party, we played golf, but as we started to grow up, we realized that it would be better to do something where the only people we could hurt would be ourselves.
What is Mölkky?
Mölkky is a yard game from Finland in which you throw a wooden log at a bunch of other numbered wooden logs, as shown in the picture below. From a distance of 3 to 4 meters, you throw at the pins, and if you knock down one pin, you points corresponding to the number on the pin. If you knock down more than one pin, you get points corresponding to the number of pins you knocked down. If you fail to knock down any pins, you get a strike. And if you get three strikes in a row on consecutive turns, you are eliminated from the game. The goal is to get to 50 points exactly, but if you go over 50, your score is reset to 25 and the game continues. If a pin is leaning on another pin or on the thrown log, it does not count as down. Each pin that has been knocked down is rest at the spot where it fell and play continues – over time the pins can become quite spread out… The throwing log must be thrown underhand. In this video, Abe Lincoln explains the rules of Mölkky…
Important vocabulary for Mölkky:
- “Relevant” – A given player is considered “relevant” if they can win the game on their next turn.
- “Hot” – A given score is “hot” for a relevant player when he needs that score to win on his next throw. For example, if one of the players has 42 points, the “8” would be “hot”. The scorekeeper is responsible to make sure all players know what pins are hot and for who before they throw.
- “Juicy” – A pin is considered “juicy” when it is standing alone, with no other pin nearby, so that it could be easily knocked down on the next throw without any other pins falling with it.
- “Foot fault” – A “foot fault” occurs when someone throws the log without being in the proper position on the field – i.e. if they cross the line before the throw. Technically that would count as a strike, but it has only been enforced once in the history of NYC Mölkky, however… We are a forgiving bunch…
- “Stinker” – if someone is trying to knock down one and only one pin, but accidentally end up hitting another pin as well (often quite far away), that pin is called a “stinker”.
- “Run, Ben, Run” – is what you yell when someone knocks the pins extremely far, and someone (in this case, Ben) has to run after the logs to chase the and reset them.
- “Quorum” – at least three players are required to begin an official round of play.
- “Beep beep” – if someone takes too much time before their shot, other players are allowed to randomly begin screaming “beep.” If they appear to being too much math, you can shout out random integers and incorrect equations to confuse them if they take too long.
New York Rules:
Over time, we have modified the official rules to make the game more interesting, competitive, and suitable for the unusual terrain of Central Park. New York modifications to the rules are as follows:
- If you knock down all 12 pins on the same shot (most likely on the opening break shot when the pins are all clumped together), you get a “Breakers dozen,” or 13 points.
- If you get three strikes in a row, rather than being eliminated, your score is reset to 0 and the game continues – this was so people would not end up too bored in lengthy games.
- Whoever wins a given round goes last in the next round, and gets to setup the pins wherever he wants, and also determines the start line and therefore the distance between line and pins. Additionally, that person has the option of making up a rule which would apply starting in the second throw of the next round of the game. Example rules could be “if you knock down exactly 2 pins, you can add, subtract, or multiply the numbers on those two pins” or “if you drive a pin past some obstacle on the course, the pin can be removed from the game”, or “you have to name the pin you are aiming at, and if the pin you called does not fall, you get credited with a strike, no matter what else goes down”. Rules have become creative over time, yet, often we stick to “vanilla” Mölkky.
- A two-thirds majority of the other players in the game can veto any proposed rule, and also can declare a game over because winning would be deemed impossible because of the conditions (i.e. the pins are so far away as to make resolving the game impossible, or darkness, or whatever…)
- If a pin is leaning on an obstacle in the park (tree, rock, or whatever), but not on another pin or on the throwing log, the pin is deemed to have been knocked down if it falls below a 45 degree angle with the ground.
- “Ass up is down” – if a pin lands with the top of the pin closer to the ground than the bottom of the pin, even if it is leaning on other pins or the throwing log, it is considered down in NYC Mölkky.
- If anyone hits a squirrel and it makes a sound, they win the round.
- “Interference” – if someone accidentally gets in the way of the pins, the thrower has the option of a second throw.
- Whoever has the lowest score in the previous round has to keep score in the next round and is responsible to warn players when someone is within striking distance of 50, informing the others of what scores are “hot”.
- Whoever wins the last game is the champion of the day, even if they have not won a single game all afternoon until then. The champion of the day gets the right to set up and make rules in the first round in the subsequent week.
- A Mölkky game consists of as many games as there is time to finish before 3 hours from the designated start time (even if the start is delayed because of the lack of a quorum – 3 players needed to begin a round). If the game starts at 1pm, for example, the first game that ends after 4:00 would be the final game. If a game ends, however, at 3:59:59, another round must be played. This can be overruled as well by 2/3 majority of all players other than the winner of the previous round.
- If any human or animal accidentally knocks over a pin, or moves one of the pins, the pins are rest to their original positions, unless they are Canadian, in which case, the pins are played in whatever position the Canadian moved them to.
After the 2020 Weirdo Party Mölkky Tournament was so successful, at the suggestion of Ron Hay, we began meeting every week on Sunday afternoons, to play Mölkky throughout the pandemic, and the game continues to this day. During those dark days of 2020-2021, it was our only real social activity, as most of the regulars are low brass musicians, nobody had anything to do professionally until autumn 2021 as lockdown rules prevented virtually all live concerts… During those years, we played in torrential rain storms, blizzards and whatever else the Mölkky gods sent our way, as we were so starved for human interaction because of the authoritarian Covid response of NYC officials. Note that they required us to wear masks, even outside, even in snowstorms, throughout 2020 and 2021…
Most Sundays, however, even now, in 2025, we meet by the benches near the ballfields inside Central Park West near 100th Street, and we find a field in the area that is relatively unoccupied to begin play – a quorum of 3 players is needed to begin, and if the previous week’s champion shows up, they decide where we will begin play.
Please join our NYC Mölkky Association Facebook group if you are interested to join us! We usually decide on Thursday or Friday whether or not to play the next Sunday, based on whether or not we have a quorum of at least 3 players coming.
