Toss & target games

Washer toss is the newest page in this family and the odd one out. Every other game here has a governing body publishing dimensions — the ACL for cornhole, the NHPA for horseshoes. Washer pitching has none, so its figures are conventions that vary regionally rather than rules. It is also the shortest court in this family after ladder toss, which is the reason to care: washer toss.

Three of the four win at 21, which is not a coincidence — it is the shared inheritance of American backyard scoring. The differences are in how you get there. Cornhole uses cancellation scoring, where only the net difference in a round counts, so a round where both teams score well can move the total by one point. Kan Jam and ladder toss both require exactly 21, so overshooting is penalized. That single rule makes both games much longer and much more tense at the end than cornhole.

Cornhole earns its position: the American Cornhole League publishes every dimension, so a home setup can be genuinely correct rather than approximately correct; it plays two or four; and the equipment is the most standardized in yard games, which means bags from one maker fit boards from another.

Three situations where it is the wrong buy:

• Your longest run is under 30 feet. The court is 27 feet board-front to board-front plus a 3-by-4-foot pitcher's box behind each board. Under 30 feet you are throwing from the flowerbed. Buy ladder toss instead.
• You need to carry it any distance. The lightest full set here publishes 38 pounds; the heaviest publishes 46. Kan Jam goals nest into one another.
• You have ten or more people. Four players, then a queue. For a crowd, kubb takes 2 to 12.

Buy one regulation cornhole set with plywood tops and resin-filled bags, and buy the bags separately if the set includes six rather than eight. That is the whole first purchase. Everything else in this family is an addition to a party, not the party.

Our full ranking with published specs for each set is on the cornhole page. If you already own boards and the bags are the disappointing part — which they usually are — go straight to cornhole bags.

Ring toss is the sixth game here and the only one with no minimum footprint at all. Five scoring towers, four rope rings, and a throwing line you set yourself — which makes it the only throwing game we would happily put on a balcony, indoors, or six feet from a three-year-old: best ring toss game.

Each of the bigger games now also has a page for the decision it actually turns on: cornhole accessories, cast iron vs drop-forged horseshoes, wood vs PVC ladder toss, and which Kan Jam set to buy.

Polish horseshoes and hook and ring join this family. The first is a disc thrown to knock a bottle off a pole, with the defender diving to catch it — the adult party game of the two, and the one Triumph publishes 20, 30 and 40 foot courts for: best Polish horseshoes set. The second is the old bar game of a ring swung on a rope at a hook, now sold for walls, lawns and playrooms: best hook and ring game.

Quoits is the ring toss game adults actually played. Rope rings pitched at a pin with a published tournament distance of 21 feet, scored 3 for a ringer and 1 for a ring on the platform — horseshoes without the steel, the pit or the risk: best quoits set. For the smallest throwers, smaller boards and real-weight bags are in cornhole sets for kids.

The pointed lawn darts of the 1970s are illegal to sell in the United States. The CPSC banned them in 1988 after three children died, and every set on sale today is legal because it has a soft tip and is not designed to stick in the ground: best lawn darts. The scoring, the safety brief and what to do with a vintage set are in lawn dart rules and safety, and the throwing game it most resembles is covered in lawn darts vs horseshoes.

Every set on sale ships twelve buckets — six a side — against the ten a side of the table game it comes from. That makes a smaller triangle and a much shorter game, and nobody mentions it. It is also the loosest game in this section: no governing body, no published court, and across five sets exactly one published measurement. The sets, and how to set a throw distance no maker states, are in best yard pong set — the one throwing game here that works better on sand than on a mown lawn.