Ask someone from Boston what bowling looks like and you might be surprised by the answer. Tall, thin pins shaped like candlesticks. A small ball the size of a large grapefruit, no finger holes, weighing about 2.5 pounds. Three balls per frame. And the fallen pins — called "dead wood" — stay on the lane throughout the frame, creating obstacles and opportunities simultaneously.
Candlepin bowling is native to New England and the Maritime provinces of Canada. It has been played continuously since 1880 in Massachusetts, where it was invented, and remains the dominant form of bowling in much of the region. To most of the world, it's entirely unknown. To New Englanders, it's simply "bowling."
History: Worcester, Massachusetts, 1880
Candlepin bowling was invented by Justin White, a bowling alley proprietor in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1880. White designed a set of pins that were taller and thinner than the German nine-pins then in common use — shaped, as the name suggests, like candles. He paired them with a smaller ball and developed a distinct set of rules that became the regional standard.
The game spread rapidly through New England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the time ten-pin bowling was standardizing nationally through the American Bowling Congress in the early 1900s, candlepin was already deeply embedded in New England culture as a separate sport with its own identity, its own governing bodies, and its own competitive infrastructure.
Candlepin has the distinction of being one of the first sports ever televised in the United States. "Candlepin Bowling" aired on Boston's WBZ-TV beginning in 1958 and ran for an extraordinary 40 years, making it one of the longest-running sports programs in American television history. For generations of New Englanders, Saturday morning candlepin on TV was as routine as cartoons.
The Equipment
The ball: 4.5 inches in diameter, weighing 2 pounds 7 ounces maximum. No finger holes — gripped in the palm. The small size makes it easy to handle for players of all ages and physical abilities. Children can bowl candlepin as young as three or four years old without special equipment.
The pins: 15¾ inches tall, 2¾ inches in diameter at the widest point, weighing about 2 pounds 8 ounces. The cylindrical, nearly uniform-width shape is what makes candlepin so visually distinct — they look nothing like ten-pin or duckpin pins. The pins' narrow profile means the ball can thread between them easily, and their relatively heavy weight relative to the ball makes them difficult to scatter.
Dead wood: The single most distinctive rule in candlepin. When a pin falls, it stays on the lane. Fallen pins — called dead wood — can either help you (a pin lying in the path of the ball can knock over standing pins it touches) or hurt you (pins lying in inconvenient positions can deflect the ball or block access to standing pins). Learning to use dead wood strategically is one of the higher-level skills in candlepin.
Scoring: The Dead Wood Dimension
Candlepin scoring follows the same basic logic as ten-pin: strikes earn 10 plus the next two deliveries, spares earn 10 plus the next one delivery, and open frames score only raw pins. The three-ball rule adds a layer: if you knock all ten pins in three balls, you score 10 for that frame (equivalent to a spare) and earn no bonus beyond the standard spare bonus.
Where candlepin scoring gets interesting is the dead wood calculation. Because fallen pins remain on the lane, a ball that contacts dead wood can theoretically knock over standing pins the ball never directly touched. A pin lying flat on the lane, well-placed, can act as a bridge — the ball rides over it or into it, redirecting toward a standing pin that would have been otherwise unreachable.
This dead wood dynamic is what makes candlepin genuinely strategic. After your first ball, you assess not only which pins are standing but where the fallen pins are located. Sometimes the best shot on your second ball is not aimed at a standing pin directly but at a piece of dead wood positioned to do the work for you.
| Feature | Candlepin | Duckpin | Ten-Pin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Origin | Worcester MA, 1880 | Baltimore MD, 1900 | New York, 1840s |
| Ball diameter | 4.5 inches | 3¾–5 inches | 8.5 inches |
| Finger holes | None | None | 2–3 |
| Balls per frame | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| Fallen pins | Stay on lane (dead wood) | Cleared between balls | Cleared between balls |
| Perfect game | 300 (never officially bowled) | 279 (never officially bowled) | 300 (common at elite level) |
| Primary region | New England, Maritime Canada | Mid-Atlantic states | Worldwide |
Why Candlepin Is Harder Than It Looks
New Englanders will tell you that candlepin is harder than ten-pin, and the statistics support them. The average recreational candlepin score is considerably lower than the equivalent ten-pin score — a score of 100 in candlepin represents reasonably solid play; the equivalent competency level in ten-pin would produce scores well above 100.
The difficulty comes from several compounding factors. The ball is too small to cover multiple pins on contact — every pin is essentially a direct-contact problem rather than a chain-reaction problem. The pins are too narrow to generate much scatter even when hit well. The dead wood rule, while theoretically helpful, often creates lanes cluttered with pins in unhelpful positions. And three balls per frame isn't enough to clean up the complex leaves that a first-ball miss tends to produce.
Professional candlepin players routinely bowl games in the 120–150 range in competition. The highest-ever sanctioned game score of 245 stands as an almost unreachable benchmark that top professionals chase across entire careers.
Where to Play Candlepin
Candlepin bowling is found primarily in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in Canada. Within these areas, candlepin centers are often the dominant or only form of bowling available — in many Massachusetts towns, the local bowling center has exclusively candlepin lanes.
Outside New England, candlepin is essentially nonexistent. If you're visiting the region and want to experience what bowling has looked like in New England for nearly 150 years, virtually any local bowling center will have candlepin available. In many communities, the local candlepin center is a historic institution — buildings with decades of league history, family photos on the walls, and regulars who have been bowling the same night every week for thirty years.
The sport has a dedicated governing organization, the International Candlepin Bowling Association (ICBA), which sanctions leagues and tournaments and maintains historical records. Youth candlepin leagues remain active throughout New England, providing the developmental pathway that keeps the sport alive for the next generation.
Candlepin vs. Duckpin: The Other American Bowling Debate
Both candlepin and duckpin are distinctly American regional bowling variants that predate the national standardization of ten-pin, both use small no-hole balls with three balls per frame, and both have never produced a verified perfect game in sanctioned competition. The comparison is irresistible, and partisans of each game have strong views about which is harder.
The key structural difference is the dead wood rule. Duckpin clears fallen pins between each ball, making every delivery a clean-lane problem. Candlepin leaves them, creating a variable that affects every shot in ways that are difficult to fully control or predict. Most serious analysts of both games consider this dead wood element to make candlepin harder to master, while duckpin's heavier pins and weaker ball-to-pin energy transfer make it harder to score on clean racks.
The honest answer is that both are harder than ten-pin in their own ways, both reward genuine skill that takes years to develop, and both deserve far more recognition than they receive outside their respective home regions.