Things You'll Need:
- a decent throwing arm
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Step 1
We've all seen the infamous milk bottle game. And like most carnival games, it's a bit of a mental illusion. How you think you can knock the bottles down isn't really the best way to knock them down. But if you know exactly how to throw and are pretty accurate, you can knock them all down almost every time.
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Step 2
First, you need to throw from the widest angle possible. Don't push it to far or they'll tell you to stand centered with the stack. The best sneaky way to do this is to walk up with one or two other people with someone else in the center. That way you're standing off center when you throw. You only need a little bit of an angle to gain a large advantage. But don't freak out if you end up having to throw straight on. It can still work easily that way.
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Step 3
aiming spotsNow we have to talk about aiming. Just look at the attached diagram. If you're standing more to the left, you'll want to aim for one of the left target areas and aim for the right if you're on the right. The orange spots will take out the entire bottom row but if you can hit directly on one of the green areas and nick one of the 2nd row bottles, that will significantly improve the odds of them all getting knocked down.
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Step 4
projected vectorsIf you hit the bottles exactly on the left green spot, the bottles should all fly as shown in the attached diagram. 4 will fly off to the left because you hit it on the right side. 5 will fly to the right and take 6 with it. It’s sort of like pool meets bowling. You have to hit 5 really far to the left and very hard to make it take down 6 completely. Now let’s talk about hardness for a second. Most people try to throw the ball as hard as possible like it’s bowling which would increase pin bounce and the likelihood that one pin will take down multiple other ones. But in the flat triangle shape, there’s no depth so throwing harder won’t do you any good. But you do need to throw hard enough to get a significant amount of sideways motion from bottle 5. So basically don’t throw it really soft like a crumpled piece of paper into a recycling bin for maximum accuracy but don’t pitch it as hard as you can either because that decreases accuracy. It’s best to just throw as hard as you accurately can. So anyway, if you nick 2, it will fly backwards instead of dropping straight down. The sideways motion from 5 and 6 should shift 3’s bottom to the right which will send it down at an angle and cause it to not remain standing when it falls. Bottle number 1 is completely up in the air but since it’s so high up, any sort of force tipping it one way or another will cause it to tip over when it hits. It’s unlikely that it will avoid every other bottle and drop straight down and stay standing.
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Step 5
It's worth mentioning that since you're hitting 5 on the top, it has to tip into 6, not slide like a pool ball. If the bottle isn't top heavy enough though, it won't be enough force to knock 6 over. This is where standing at an angle gives you a major advantage. Any sort of extra sideways force instead of straight backward force will cause 6 to fall down. But if you notice that the bottles on the bottom row are reasonably spaced apart, aim between the middle and bottom of the bottles. This will cause a lot more sideways force from bottle 5 and you'll just have to rely on luck for bottle 2, but it's unlikely it will drop straight down and remain standing. If there's practically no gap though, you'll have to aim higher to the tops.
Comments
veryirie said
on 5/25/2009 I'm ready now; ha! I've NEVER won anything at this game, probably because I threw it as hard as I could right down the center, which is what you're saying not to do. Thanks Des. :)
NicoleAZ said
on 5/20/2008 Great explanation! 5 stars from me!
showpup said
on 4/26/2008 Thanks for this article. How fun! When the festival comes to town, I'm trying it. And hey, wouldn't it make a fun quickie web game? Kind of like the pool games. :)