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Re:The hotel bathroom puzzle by jopsen on Sunday July 15, 2018 @07:33AM (#17534784)
I saw one recently where each of the pins had tiny wire at the top...

It didn't really affect the game, you could see or notice them. But when setting the pins, it just pulled the wires, and gently relaxed the wires till the pin was standing on it's own.

Sometimes simple does the trick :)

Re:The hotel bathroom puzzle by adanto6840 on Sunday July 15, 2018 @10:40AM (#17535425)
These are called 'string pinsetters'. While they have recently become far, far better in achieving very low "impact" on the game, many bowlers will strongly prefer to play on a "free fall" or normal pinsetter. It's fairly rare but there are definitely circumstances that you just won't see happen on a string pinsetter that can and will occur on free-fall; likewise, there's always the risk that a string ('wire') will catch and topple over an adjacent pin.

Personally, I prefer to bowl with lanes that have well-maintained A2s, or alternatively the newer GS-X pinsetters. I hope to eventually build a pair of lanes in my home (my motivational pipe dream), and I'd almost surely go with one of these two even versus the substantially lower upkeep requirements (mean frames between blackout) of the string pinsetters.

Re:The hotel bathroom puzzle by rpeden on Sunday July 15, 2018 @11:09AM (#17535541)
It doesn't always do the trick. :)

Long, long ago when I worked at at bowling alley, when it was busy I'd have to run down to the end of the lanes a few times a night to untangle the strings the pins were attached to.