Eight-ball

Eight-ball (often spelled 8-ball or eightball, and sometimes called solids and stripes, spots and stripes in the UK or, more rarely, bigs and littles/smalls or highs and lows) is a pool (pocket billiards) game popular in much of the world, and the subject of international professional and amateur competition. Played on a pool table with six pockets, the game is so universally known in some countries that beginners are often unaware of other pool games and believe the word "pool" itself refers to eight-ball. The game has numerous variations, including Alabama eight-ball, crazy eight, last pocket, misery, Missouri, 1 and 15 in the sides, rotation eight ball, soft eight, and others. Standard eight-ball is the second most competitive professional pool game, after nine-ball and for the last several decades ahead of straight pool.

Eight-ball is played with cue sticks and 16 balls: a cue ball, and 15 object balls consisting of seven striped balls, seven solid-colored balls and the black 8 ball. After the balls are scattered with a break shot, the players are assigned either the group of solid balls or the stripes once a ball from a particular group is legally pocketed. The ultimate object of the game is to legally pocket the eight ball in a called pocket, which can only be done after all of the balls from a player's assigned group have been cleared from the table.

Eight-ball (disambiguation)

Eight-ball (or 8-ball) is a pool (pocket billiards) game. Eightball, 8 Ball, eight ball, 8ball, and various other spellings, may also refer to:

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Zucchini

Zucchini (/zuːˈkiːniː/) or courgette (/kʊərˈʒɛt/, British English) is a summer squash which can reach nearly a meter in length, but which is usually harvested at half that size or less. In England, a fully grown zucchini is referred to as a marrow.

Along with certain other squashes and pumpkins, it belongs to the species Cucurbita pepo. Zucchini can be dark or light green. A related hybrid, the golden zucchini, is a deep yellow or orange color.

In a culinary context, zucchini is treated as a vegetable; it is usually cooked and presented as a savory dish or accompaniment. Botanically, zucchinis are fruits, a type of botanical berry, being the swollen ovary of the zucchini flower.

Zucchini, like all squash, has its ancestry in the Americas. However, the varieties of squash typically called "zucchini" were developed in Italy, many generations after their introduction from the Americas.

Name

In North America, Australia and Germany, the plant is commonly called a zucchini (ⁱ/zuːˈkiːni/; plural: zucchini or zucchinis), from Italian: zucchina[dzukˈkiːna], plural: zucchine. In Scandinavia, however, the name squash is more commonly used than zucchini.