Candlepin: New England's own game.

What is candlepin bowling?

Candlepin is a ten-pin game played mostly in New England and Canada’s Maritime provinces. Its governing body, the International Candlepin Bowling Association (ICBA), describes it as “a bowling game unique to New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces” and says it was “First played in Worcester Massachusetts in 1880.” The ICBA was formed by the Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia associations, with its bylaws approved on January 9, 1986, so that candlepin bowlers play “under the same conditions and rules no matter where they bowl.”

Equipment

The ICBA does not publish its equipment specifications online, so these figures come from Wikipedia and a 2014 Boston Globe explainer, both of which credit ICBA rules:

Pins	About 15¾ inches tall and 215⁄16 inches thick, nearly cylindrical, up to 2 lb 8 oz each
Ball	About 4½ inches across, 2 lb 4 oz to 2 lb 7 oz, no finger holes
Lane	60 feet from the foul line to the head pin, like tenpin, with a deadwood line in front of the pins and a lob line 10 feet past the foul line

The striking detail: each candlepin weighs more than the ball you roll at it. That, plus the thin pins, is why candlepin is famously hard.

How candlepin is scored

From the ICBA rules: “A game shall consist of ten frames (boxes) in each of which three balls shall be rolled, except when a player scores a strike or spare, called marks.”

• Strike: “ten plus the number of pins downed by the next two balls rolled by that bowler.”
• Spare (all ten with two balls): “ten plus the number of pins downed by the next ball rolled by that bowler.”
• All ten with three balls: you get the pins knocked down, which is ten, with no bonus. Bowlers call it a “ten-box.”
• Tenth frame: a strike or spare earns one or two more balls to finish the frame.

A perfect game is 300, and nobody has ever rolled one.

The wood: candlepin’s defining rule

In most bowling, fallen pins are swept away before your next ball. Not in candlepin. The ICBA rule: “All downed pins, called wood, remaining on the lane entirely behind the deadwood line are live and playable.” Wood that ends up on or in front of the deadwood line is dead and removed.

So a pin lying on its side can become your best tool, and good candlepin bowlers aim at the wood as often as at standing pins. A few rules keep it fair: wood is judged live or dead only after it stops moving, you must wait for it to stop before rolling (or it is a foul), and a pin that gets knocked down and bounces back upright counts as down and stays as wood.

How to bowl candlepin

• Roll it, don’t throw it. The ICBA puts it plainly: “Bowling is a game of rolling, not throwing the ball.” The ball must touch the lane before the 10-foot lob line, or it is a foul.
• Hold it in your hand. With no holes, you cradle the ball in your palm and fingers.
• Think three balls ahead. Your first ball sets up the wood for your second and third.
• Keep your expectations friendly. A Canadian seniors’ rulebook puts it best: “deadwood may be their best friend and that a score of 100 isn’t too bad!”

Candlepin vs duckpin

Both are small-ball games with ten pins, ten frames, three balls a frame and holeless balls. The key difference is the wood: in candlepin fallen pins stay in play, while in duckpin they are cleared after every ball. Candlepins are tall and thin while duckpins are short and squat, the duckpin ball is bigger and heavier, and only candlepin has a lob line.

Records

• Men’s single string: 245, set by Ralph Semb in 1984 at Community Lanes in Westfield, Massachusetts (Massachusetts Bowling Association), and tied by Chris Sargent at Metro Bowl Lanes in Peabody in 2011, a score WBUR reported the ICBA “has accepted.”
• Women’s single string: 210, Jenny Rowe of Franklin, Massachusetts, in September 2024, beating a 207 that had stood since 2001.

A short history

Candlepin began in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1880, according to the ICBA; GBH News places the debut in “a Worcester billiards hall.” Who invented it is disputed: credit usually goes to hall owner Justin White, sometimes to billiards player John Monsey. In 1947 two lawyers, Howard Dowd and Lionel Barrow, invented the first automatic candlepin pinsetter, the Bowl-Mor, and from 1958 candlepin became a fixture on Boston television for decades.

At its peak around the 1960s there may have been 250 candlepin alleys across the region, by one estimate reported by GBH News. Many have closed since, partly because old pinsetters are expensive to maintain: Worcester’s last center, Colonial Bowling Center, closed in 2020.

Where to bowl candlepin today

You will find candlepin in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and other parts of New England, plus Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. One estimate quoted by GBH News in 2024 put the number of candlepin centers left in New England at about 75. The ICBA runs an interactive find-a-center map, and its state associations keep rosters of member centers.

Candlepin centers on the ICBA map

The ICBA’s own center map lists the 41 centers below: 20 in Massachusetts, 12 in Maine, 7 in New Hampshire and one each in Vermont and New York. The map carries no date, and its preview image on the ICBA site is labelled 2020-21, so centers may have opened or closed since. Call before you drive.

Source: International Candlepin Bowling Association, Find a Center map data, read 23 October 2026.

Sources: ICBA, what we do and ICBA rules (April 2018 edition); Massachusetts Bowling Association records; WBUR (2011); MyFM (2024); GBH News (2024); Boston Globe (2014); Canada 55+ Games candlepin rules; Wikipedia (equipment, pinsetter, inventor dispute).