Novuss

Novuss (also known as koroona or korona) is a two-player (or four-player, doubles) game of physical skill which is closely related to carrom and pocket billiards. Novuss originates from Estonia and Latvia, where it is a national sport. The board is approximately 100 centimetres (39 in) square, typically made of wood, has pockets in each corner, and lines marked on the surface. The board is usually placed on a stand, but may be placed on a barrel or other surface that allows the pockets to hang down properly. It uses small discs instead of balls, and each player has a small puck instead of the cue ball used in other cue sports. Players use a small cue stick to propel their pucks into their colored object discs (the novuss equivalent of object balls), knocking them into the pockets. The winner is the first one to sink all eight of their object discs (of which there are sixteen in total in two different-coloured sets, plus the two pucks).

The game is sometimes informally referred to as "Baltic billiards" or "Scandinavian billiards", but the latter is a misnomer, since neither Latvia nor Estonia are part of Scandinavia, which instead comprises Norway, Sweden and Denmark. On the other hand, in Sweden and Denmark, a similar game is played under the names 'Couronne' and 'Bob' respectively. However, unlike in novuss, the object discs in Couronne/Bob are arranged into a circle formation on the centre of the board like in carrom, and each player is given fifteen discs instead of eight.

A game similar to novuss is also played in the Philippines. The table in this game, however, is rotatable.^[1]