The Fort Dodge Messenger: Aug. 12, 1903

New Game Has Reached Town

Is Known as “Brist” and is Becoming Popular

Played With a Boomerang and a “Rakaw” — Interest Follows Practice in the Game

The latest novelty in games the successor to ping pong, “Brist” has struck Fort Dodge. This is an out door game played by any number of persons with paraphernalia known as boomerangs and “rakaws.”

The boomerang, an instrument as its name signifies, which will return to the player when thrown into the air, constructed along the idea of the Australian boomerang, it returns. It is not, however, of the same shape as the Australian boomerang.

The Australian boomerang is a piece of wood carved in an irregular semicular (sic) shape so that when it is thrown by a native, having much practice and considerable strength and dexterity, will return to the spot from which it is started. The modern device, with which the game is played, is simply a cross-like arrangement, composed of two sticks larger at the ends and which are fastened in the center in order that it may be made any size. By pressing the sticks close together and making the angle smaller the boomerang when thrown, flys (sic) in an oblong path. When the sicks are placed at right angles the device completes a semicircle and with practice one may throw the instrument around a house. The “Rakaw” is the net like arrangement used to catch the returning boomerang.

The game of “Brist” with which the boomerangs are use is played by standing in the center of three rings and throwing the boomerang. The object of the game being to catch the boomerang if possible without stepping out of the inner circle. If this is done the player is credited four points. If he catches it in the second circle three is made and in the third two. Ten innings constitute a game. Each player is given three consecutive throws in each inning, so that the highest possible score for a game is 120 points, twelve to each inning.

The originators of the game claim that anyone with a few hour’s (sic) practice can learn to manipulate the strange device. This being so the game will without doubt prove as popular as the late Bill Nye’s paper of the same name.

(Editor’s note: The Bill Nye referred to here was Edgar Wilson Nye. Below is a video of John Flynn, who is well-known in boomerang competition, demonstrating various types of boomerangs. In the first couple of minutes he shows a Brist boomerang and the net, spelled rakaw in this article. He goes on to show fast catch boomerangs.)

Tags: 1903, Nye