RObBY's GAME.
Murgatroyd Moonbeam
Tiddlywinks is an indoor game played with sets of small discs called
"winks" lying on a surface, usually a flat mat. Players use a larger
disc called a "squidger" to pop a wink into flight by pressing down on
one side of the wink. The objective of the game is to cause the winks to
land either on top of opponents' winks, or ultimately inside a pot or
cup. In 2006 the first championship was held at the NEC center, Joshua
Brook and Mathew Breban on the South Yorkshire team took the title
winning the final 18 sets to 5.
To many, tiddlywinks is considered to be a simpleminded, frivolous
children's game, rather than an adult game. The modern competitive adult
game (now called tiddlywinks) made a strong comeback at the University
of Cambridge in 1955. The modern game utilises far more complex rules
and a consistent set of high-grade equipment. The rest of this article
concerns the adult game.
Contents
1 Overview of the rules
2 National and international organisations
3 Competitive play
4 Skill versus strategy, and comparable games
5 Equipment
6 Tiddlywinks terminology
7 History
8 References
9 External links
[edit] Overview of the rules
Tiddlywinks is in essence a game for four players playing in
partnerships, though it is often played between two opponents, each
playing the role of two partners. Each player controls the winks of one
colour, the colours being blue, green, red and yellow. Red and blue are
always partners against green and yellow. There are six winks of each
colour, which begin the game in the corners of a felt mat measuring 6
feet by 3 feet. This mat is usually placed on a table, and a pot is
placed at its centre.
The players take turns, and there are two basic aims: to cover (or
squop) opponent winks, and to get one's own winks into the pot. As in
pool or snooker, if a player pots a wink of his own colour, then he is
entitled to an extra shot, and this enables a skilled player to pot all
of his winks in one turn. The point of squopping, which is the key
element distinguishing the adult game from the child's game (though
recognized in even the earliest rules from 1890), is that a wink that is
covered (even partially) may not be played by its owner. The wink on top
may be played, though, and top-level play involves sophisticated shots
manipulating large piles of winks.
The game ends in one of two ways; either all the winks of one colour are
potted (a pot-out), or play continues up to a specified time limit
(usually 25 minutes), after which each colour has a further five turns.
Then a scoring system is used to rank the players, based on the numbers
of potted and unsquopped winks of each colour.
[edit] National and international organisations
There are two national associations, the English Tiddlywinks Association
(ETwA) and the North American Tiddlywinks Association (NATwA) (the
Scottish Tiddlywinks Association disbanded in the late 1990s). These
organisations are responsible for the running of tournaments and
maintaining the rules of the game (which actually differ only slightly
between the two organisations; the NATwA rules are based on the ETwA
rules). International competition is overseen by the International
Federation of Tiddlywinks Associations (IFTwA), though in practice it is
rarely called upon to intervene.
[edit] Competitive play
Although tiddlywinks nowadays is a singles or pairs game, competition in
the 1950s through the 1980s centred on team competition, with teams
consisting of several (three or four) pairs. There were several
university teams, and international matches were also played. More
recently, singles and pairs tournaments have come to be the focus of
competitive tiddlywinks, with only a few team matches being played each
year. The four most prestigious tournaments are the National Singles and
National Pairs tournaments held in England and the USA. The World
Singles and World Pairs championships operate on a challenge basis;
anyone winning a national tournament (or being the highest-placed home
player behind a foreign winner) is entitled to challenge the current
champion.
There are several other less prestigious tournaments in England and the
USA throughout the year, often with a format designed to encourage
inexperienced players, for example, the Indvidual Pairs format. The
results of tournaments and World Championship matches are used to
calculate Tiddlywinks Ratings, which give a ranking of players.
Typically there are about 120 players in the Ratings system.
[edit] Skill versus strategy, and comparable games
The important appeal of the game for many players is the required
combination of manual dexterity and strategic thought. Tiddlywinkers
often claim that the game combines physical skill (such as in snooker or
golf) with the strategy of chess. What is true is that tiddlywinks is
unique in the combination of skill and strategy it requires. Strategy in
tiddlywinks is often rather deep, since winks can be captured. Strategic
and tactical planning involves anticipating opponents' moves rather than
just building a sequence of one's own moves. Another factor that
complicates the game is that there is a time limit to the play of the
game, rather than until some objective in the game has been met.
All in all, tiddlywinks goes beyond the purely cerebral nature of a game
such as chess. The fact that shots can be made or missed, together with
the continuum of possible outcomes, makes strategy much less rigid than
in chess, and prevents planning more than seven or eight shots in
advance.
[edit] Equipment
The winks and pot used in competitive play are standard, and are
supplied by the English Tiddlywinks Association. The pots are made of
moulded plastic (historically always red, though there is no known
reason for this), with specified diameters at the top and the base, and
specified height. The winks are made in Italy to specified measurements,
and are made by slicing an extruded cylinder rather than by moulding,
and then smoothing them in a tumbler. Although this leads to some minor
variation in thickness, it produces a much smoother edge to the wink
than seen on cheap moulded winks.
The mats are made of thick felt, usually of the type used for
insulation. Mats obtained from different suppliers have different
characteristics, and part of the skill of a tournament player is to
adjust to different mats.
Squidgers are custom-made by their owners. As with golf clubs, a player
may use as many as he likes, selecting an appropriate squidger for each
shot. Top players will carry anything up to twenty different squidgers,
but will not typically use all of them in one game. The rules governing
squidgers are liberal; a range of dimensions are permitted, and the
material is not specified, except for the condition that squidgers must
not damage winks. Typically squidgers are made from different types of
plastic, though glass, rubber, cork and onyx are often seen. The
squidgers are usually filed or sanded to give a sharp edge and then
polished.
[edit] Tiddlywinks terminology
Many of the shots from tiddlywinks have unusual names, some of which
have become dictionary entries[1]. Here is a small selection.
Pinch (new!): an unsuccessful attempt to squop a wink
Leapfrog (new!): an attempt to squop a wink but jumps over it instead
Blitz: an attempt to pot all six winks of your own colour early in the
game
Bomb: to send a wink at a pile, usually from distance, in the hope of
significantly disturbing it
Boondock: to free a squopped wink by sending it a long way away, leaving
the squopping wink free in the battle area
Bristol: a shot which moves a pile of two or more winks as a single
unit; the shot is played by holding the squidger at right angles to its
normal plane
Carnovsky(US)/Penhaligon(UK): potting a wink from the baseline (i.e.
from 3 feet away)
Cracker: a simultaneous knock-off and squop, i.e. a shot which knocks
one wink off the top of another while simultaneously squopping it
Crud: a forceful shot whose purpose is to destroy a pile completely
Good shot: named after John Good. The shot consists of playing a flat
wink through a nearby pile in the hope of destroying it
Gromp: an attempt to jump a pile onto another wink (usually with the
squidger held in a conventional rather than Bristol fashion)
John Lennon memorial shot: a simultaneous boondock and squop
Lunch: to pot a squopped wink (usually belonging to an opponent)
Scrunge: to bounce out of the pot
Squop: to play a wink so that it comes to rest above another wink
Sub: to play a wink so that it ends up under another wink
[edit] History
The game began as an adult parlour game in Victorian England. Joseph
Assheton Fincher filed the original patent application for the game in
1888, and obtained the trademark Tiddledy-Winks in 1889. John Jaques and
Son were the exclusive distributors of the game, initially, though many
other companies ultimately produced the game. It became one of the most
popular crazes during the 1890s, played by adults and children alike. In
its earlier years, many different varieties were produced to meet the
marketplace demands, including those combining tiddledy-winks principles
with tennis, basketball, croquet, golf, and other popular sports and
endeavours.[2] Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the
public perception of the game changed.
The birth of the modern game can be traced to a group of Cambridge (UK)
undergraduates meeting in Christ's College on January 16th 1955. Their
aim was to devise a sport at which they could represent the university.
Within three years the Oxford University Tiddlywinks Society was formed.
The English Tiddlywinks Association (ETwA) was founded in 1958. In the
same year, an article appeared in The Spectator entitled "Does Prince
Philip cheat at tiddlywinks?" Sensing a good publicity opportunity the
Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club (CUTwC) challenged Prince Philip
(later to become Chancellor of the University in 1976) to a tiddlywinks
match to defend his honour. The Duke of Edinburgh appointed The Goons as
his Royal champions. The Duke presented a trophy, the Silver Wink, for
the British Universities Championship.[3][4]. During the sixties as many
as 37 Universities were playing the game in Britain.
In 1962, the Oxford team toured the United States for several weeks
under the sponsorship of Guinness. They were undefeated against teams
from the New York Giants and various American colleges and
newspapers.[5] A very prominent article appeared in Life magazine in
October 1962 with coverage of the Harvard team. In the next couple of
years, Harvard and other colleges continued to play, though at a low
ebb.
In the Fall of 1965, Severin Drix started a team at Cornell, and
challenged his friend Ferd Wulkan of MIT to start a tiddlywinks team.
The North American Tiddlywinks Association (NATwA) was founded in
February 1966.[6]
The North American Tiddlywinks Association (NATwA) was formed in 1966
with founders from both USA and Canada. The game took particularly
strong root at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the early
development of most American players can still be traced to MIT today.
While the basic elements of the adult game were devised by CUTwC in its
early years, the rules have continued to be modified under the auspices
of the various national tiddlywinks associations. ETwA coordinated the
game throughout the boom period of the sixties when winks flourished. A
decline in interest in 1969-70 led to the establishment of the three
national competitions which have been contested to date, namely the
National Singles, National Pairs and the Teams of Four. There are also
annual Open Competitions, notably in Oxford, Cambridge and London.
The first serious trans-Atlantic contact was established in 1972, when a
team from MIT toured the UK. The success of the Americans shocked
complacent Britons. Competition started at the highest level, the World
Singles, in 1973. A challenge system was agreed between ETwA and NATwA.
The supreme ruling body in world contests is the International
Federation of Tiddlywinks Associations (IFTwA). To challenge at world
level, a player must win one of the national titles, or finish as the
highest placed home player behind a foreign winner. There have been 60
World Singles contests to date. The Americans dominated all the early
matches, and it was not until the 22nd contest when a Briton won for the
first time. Since then the top Britons and Americans have been closely
matched. After the establishment of the World Singles, a World Pairs
event followed, and there have now been 35 World Pairs contests.
International matches have been played occasionally since 1972.
During its brief history, winks has enjoyed variable levels of interest.
The game has never taken hold outside the UK and North America. The
focus of British tiddlywinks is still at Cambridge, and CUTwC's 50th
anniversary celebrations in 2005 were well attended. The Oxford
University Tiddlywinks Society has recently fallen out of existence.
Despite this there has recently been a minor resurgence in the game,
with new clubs having been formed recently in the University of York and
in Shrewsbury School. In America, there has been a tradition of
tiddlywinks in Washington DC, Boston, and Ithaca, and the club at MIT
has recently been restarted. National competitions are well attended,
with a group of enthusiastic young players joining the stock of
experienced players who have proved themselves at the highest level in
world competition. In the USA, the game has a firmer footing in high
schools, since the children of many of the players who took up the game
in the late 1960s and early 1970s are now of high school age. These
players are looking to revive university tiddlywinks in the USA.
On March 1, 2008, there was a Royal Match in Cambridge to commemorate
the 50th anniversary of the original Royal Match played against The
Goons in 1958 (see above). CUTwC players took on HRH Prince Philip's
Royal Champions, the Savage Club, with members of the original 1958
CUTwC team in attendance. Cambridge repeated their victory from 1958 by
winning the match 24-18.[7]
[edit] References
^ Rick Tucker, Lexicon of Tiddlywinks, 1994 (updated 1999)
^ Rick Tucker, "Tiddlywinks: The Classic Victorian Pastime: On Target
for the 21st Century", October 1996, American Game Collectors
Association, Game Researchers' Notes, ISSN 1050-6608
^ Guy Consterdine, On the Mat - 1954-1957 - The Origins of Modern
Tiddlywinks, March 1967
^ Guy Consterdine, Winks Rampant - 1957-1958 - The Development of Modern
Tiddlywinks, October 1972
^ Time, "Winking In", September 14, 1962
^ Severin Drix, "History of the North American Tiddlywinks Association,
1962 to 1969", appearing in The Missing Wink, August 1974 and February
1975
^ Royal Match of Tiddlywinks, on University of Cambridge website
[edit] External links
English Tiddlywinks Association
North American Tiddlywinks Association
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiddlywinks"