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Concept
Trucco
Summary
Trucco (also called trucks, troco, or lawn billiards) is an Italian and later English lawn game, a form of ground billiards played with heavy balls, large-headed cues sometimes called tacks, a ring (also called the argolis or port), and sometimes an upright pin (the sprigg or king). The game was popular from at least the 17th century to the early 20th century, and was a forerunner of croquet, surviving for a few generations after the introduction of the latter.
The oldest name in English seems to be trucks or truck from the Italian trucco and Spanish troco, meaning ''. The game appears to be derived from jeu de mail and its offshoot pall-mall (the latter having been especially popular in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as in western continental Europe); both were earlier ground billiards games, using mallets and often featuring a hoop target (then usually made of straw).
Trucco was popular as a country-house pastime in the 19th century. Under the name lawn billiards, it appears as an alternative to croquet in English books of games and pastimes of the period, and was also attested in the United States in this period. Trucco was also played at pubs with large lawns, but apparently died out by the time of World War II. The 1884 edition of Enquire Within upon Everything, a concise household-life handbook and topical encyclopedia, suggested that the game was popular enough in England in the late Victorian era that "the balls, cues, &c., are sold by most dealers in croquet implements".
An English painting of the early 17th century illustrates two fancily-dressed gentlemen playing trucco in small rectangular court without turf (probably clay, and perhaps wide and of larger but indeterminate length) bounded with wooden boards, using scoop-shaped maces, a ring-shaped target mounted upright on the ground, and a single leather or wooden ball barely small enough to fit through the hoop, and well under in diameter, if the scale in the image can be trusted.
Official source
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