Washer toss

Two wooden boxes with a cup sunk into the middle of each, set a short distance apart on a lawn. You throw metal washers underarm at the far box. A washer that lands in the cup is worth three; a washer that stays inside the box is worth one; you play to 21.

If that reads like a description of cornhole, it is not a coincidence. The two games share a scoring shape — three for the hard shot, one for the easy one, first to 21 — and they share the corridor geometry that makes this whole family fit yards that open-lawn games cannot.

What washer toss does differently is scale. Everything is smaller: the targets, the distance, the projectile, and the amount of yard you have to give up.

Compare that with the rest of this family and the gap is obvious. The American Cornhole League publishes the board size, the hole diameter, the bag weight and the 27-foot spacing. The National Horseshoe Pitchers Association publishes the stake lean angle in degrees. Washer toss has a Wikipedia entry that says the boxes are approximately 20 feet apart and notes that regional bodies have written their own rules.

This is the same situation as ladder toss, which also has no governing body — and it has the same practical consequence: agree the distance and the scoring out loud before the first throw, because the person you are playing may have learned a different version. The general case for doing that is in yard game etiquette and house rules.

Derived from the commonly published 20-foot box spacing plus throwing room at each end, washer toss wants roughly 26 by 6 feet — call it 160 square feet. That figure is ours, derived rather than published, and we flag it as such.

It puts washer toss level with ladder toss as the smallest real throwing game we cover, and comfortably inside a yard that cannot take a cornhole court:

The target size column is the underrated one. A cornhole board is 4 feet by 2 feet of object to store, carry and keep dry. A washer box is about sixteen inches square. Two of them latch together into something you can carry in one hand, which is a genuinely different ownership proposition from 38 to 46 pounds of cornhole boards.

For the full footprint table across every game we cover, see how much space do yard games need, and for the yards this game is aimed at, yard games for small yards.

This category is unusually thin on verifiable product, and the criteria below are the reason only one set is on this page.

1. Currently purchasable. Checked before writing, not assumed. Two obvious candidates failed this test: a 2-in-1 bean bag and washer combo from the same brand is gone from the maker's site entirely, and the Yard Games washer box set — which does publish box dimensions of 13.5 by 13.5 by 3.5 inches and six 2-inch powder-coated steel washers — reads sold out. Neither is featured here.
2. Published material, not just a photograph. Wood species, washer material and cup construction should be stated by the maker.
3. Enough washers for four players. Doubles is how this game gets played at a gathering, and a set of four washers means buying twice.
4. Honest about what is not published. No set in this category publishes much. What we can do is say so on the page rather than quietly borrowing figures from elsewhere.

We have not played this set. Every figure on this page is copied from the maker's own listing or from the commonly published game dimensions, and each is labeled as which. That is the method for everything here — how we pick.

It is untreated wood, so it comes indoors

Birch behaves like every other untreated wood on this site: it absorbs water, grays in sun, and eventually splits if it lives outdoors. Molkky is birch too, and it is the set we flag most often as a bring-it-in game. Washer toss is the same purchase in that respect — see wood vs plastic yard games and winterizing yard games.

The washers are the losable part

Eight small steel discs thrown into grass is a recipe for arriving home with seven. Count them at the end of a session rather than at the start of the next one — the same habit that saves a bocce pallino, covered in replacing lost yard game parts.

Hard ground changes it

A washer landing on a patio skids rather than settling, and metal on concrete is loud. This is a grass game first. If your only space is hard standing, look at games for driveways and hard surfaces instead — cornhole sets publish hard surfaces as playable, and washer boxes do not.

Cornhole is the better-documented game and the one guests expect to find. Washer toss wins on four specific things:

• Your clear run is 20 to 30 feet. The ACL fixes cornhole boards 27 feet apart and that distance cannot be shortened without changing the game. Washer toss at approximately 20 feet fits where cornhole does not.
• Storage is the constraint. Two sixteen-inch boxes that latch together against two 4 by 2 foot boards is not a close comparison.
• You are carrying it somewhere. Cornhole sets publish 38 to 46 pounds. This one publishes no weight, but the published form factor — two small latching boxes — speaks for itself. See travel weight of yard games.
• You already own cornhole and want the same scoring rhythm in the part of the yard the court does not reach.

And the case against: no rulebook to point at, no published dimensions, small metal projectiles around children, and a wooden set that has to come indoors. If those bother you, buy cornhole or ladder toss instead — the latter is the same footprint with bolas made of golf balls rather than steel washers, and its 3 / 2 / 1 rung scoring gives beginners partial credit that washer toss does not.

The direct head-to-head between the two games most people are choosing between here is cornhole vs ladder toss, and the scoring families across the whole catalogue are compared in yard game scoring systems.

Three things to settle, none of which a rulebook will settle for you.

The distance. Approximately 20 feet is the common figure. Pace it — an adult pace is about two and a half feet, so eight paces gets you close. Then leave it alone for the rest of the season, because a game whose distance moves is a game nobody improves at.

What is behind the far box. Every throwing game has a miss condition and a miss goes past the target. Washers are small, hard and skip on landing. Set the line so what lies beyond the far box is fence, hedge or open lawn — never a window, a path or seating.

Whether a washer that bounces in counts. The most common dispute in this game, and there is no published answer. Decide before you start.

For a permanent spot in the yard, washer toss is one of the easiest games to accommodate — a 26-foot corridor is a shape most properties have somewhere. See setting up a permanent games area.