Darts

Darts is a sport where two or more people throw small, sharp-pointed projectiles by hand at a round target called a dartboard. Points come from hitting certain marked sections, but unlike in archery, the high-value areas aren't clustered near the center—they're spread across the board. The game exists as both a professional throwing sport and a traditional pub pastime, especially popular in the British Isles and enjoyed recreationally worldwide.

In 1908, darts was officially ruled a game of skill, which meant it could be played in pubs. This happened after the landlord of the Adelphi Inn in Leeds was taken to court for allowing darts on his premises, since it was then considered a game of chance and banned from licensed venues. The landlord got support from the region's best player, William "Bigfoot" Anakin, who hung a dartboard in the courtroom and proved the game wasn't luck by hitting three double 20s in a row.

The earliest dartboards were probably cross-sections of tree trunks, whose circular shape and natural rings inspired the modern design. An old name for a dartboard is "butt," from the French word *but*, meaning "target" or "goal." The standard numbering system is credited to Lancashire carpenter Brian Gamlin, who came up with it in 1896 to punish inaccurate throws, though this claim is disputed. Many different board layouts have existed over time and place. For instance, the Yorkshire and Manchester Log End boards have no triple ring—only doubles and the bullseye. The Manchester board is smaller, with a playing area just 25 cm across, and its double and bull zones are only 4 mm wide. The London Fives board has 12 equal segments, with doubles and triples a quarter-inch wide. Mathematically, if you remove symmetrical boards by putting the "20" at the top with 1 on one side and 5 on the other, there are 19 factorial—or 121,645,100,408,832,000—possible dartboards. Many layouts would penalize a player more than the current one, but the current setup does the job quite efficiently, and several mathematical papers have studied the "optimal" board.

Before World War I, UK pubs used dartboards made from solid blocks of elm wood. But darts pocked the surface, especially around the treble twenty, and the wood needed regular soaking to stay soft. In 1935, chemist Ted Leggatt and pub owner Frank Dabbs started using the century plant, a type of agave, to make boards. They bundled small sisal fibers of the same length, compressed them into a disk, and bound it with a metal ring. This new board was an instant hit—more durable, low-maintenance, and darts simply parted the packed fibers without damaging the board.

The earliest darts were stubs of arrows or crossbow bolts. The first purpose-made darts were solid wood, wrapped with a lead strip for weight, and fitted with flights from split turkey feathers. These were mostly made in France and called French darts. Metal barrels were patented in 1906, but wood was still used into the 1950s. The first metal barrels were brass—cheap and easy to work. Wooden shafts, threaded to fit the tapped barrel, were either fletched as before or designed for paper flights. This type lasted into the 1970s. With the rise of plastic, shafts and flights were made separately, though one-piece molded plastic shaft-and-flight darts also appeared.

A regulation dartboard, per the Darts Regulation Authority, is 451 mm in diameter and divided into 20 radial sections, separated by metal wire or thin sheet metal. Quality boards are still made from sisal fibers from Eastern Africa, Brazil, and China; cheaper ones use cork or coiled paper. Modern darts have four parts: points, barrel, shaft, and flight. Points come in two common lengths—32 and 41 mm—and are sometimes knurled or coated for grip. Some are designed to retract slightly on impact to reduce bounce-outs. Barrels vary in weight and are usually brass, nickel-silver, or a tungsten alloy. Brass is cheap but light, so brass barrels tend to be bulky. Tungsten is twice as dense as brass, so a tungsten barrel of the same weight can be 30 percent smaller in diameter. Pure tungsten is brittle, so an alloy with 80–95 percent tungsten and the rest nickel, iron, or copper is common. Nickel-silver offers a middle ground between density and cost. Barrels come in three basic shapes: cylindrical, ton, or torpedo. Cylindrical barrels are the same diameter along their length, making them long and thin—good for grouping, but with the center of gravity further back. Ton-shaped barrels are thin at the ends and bulge in the middle.