1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Squails

SQUAILS (from skail or kail, a ninepin), an old English game in which disks are snapped or struck with the palm from the edge of a table or board at a mark at its centre. Its early prototype was shove-groat, called also slyp-groat or slide-thrift, which in the 18th century went under the name of jervis or jarvis. This last variation was played on a table marked with chalk into alleys divided into squares numbered from 1 to 9 or 10, the object being to send a halfpenny into a high-numbered space. If it went beyond nothing was scored. The highest aggregate of a certain number of plays won. The most scientific development of this class of games is the modern Shuffle-board (q.v.).