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 i 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.) .