In my area (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) we would find a bare patch of ground and dig a hole with the heel of our shoe. We’d stand back and take turns throwing marbles at the hole. After the initial salvo the closest to the hole got to shoot first. You wouldn’t pick the marble up but, instead, give it a push with your index finger. If you got the marble into the hole you got to shoot again. You shot until you missed then the next closest to the hole (from the initial throw) would take over. The person to sink the last marble would get all the marbles in the hole.

There’s a basic flaw in this game, of course, in that if you trying a long shot and miss you’re leaving an easier shot for your opponent. This would lead to players intentionally missing or shooting the marble way off course. We must have made rules to counteract this but I don’t remember what they were.

We called the white marbles with swirls of color “snot” marbles. We called the big marbles “doughboys.”