Tiddlywinks
Tiddlywinks is a game played on a flat felt mat with sets of small discs called winks, a pot, which is the target, and a collection of squidgers, which are also discs. Players use a squidger to shoot a wink into flight by flicking the squidger across the top of a wink and then over its edge, thereby propelling it into the air. The offensive objective of the game is to score points by sending your own winks into the pot. The defensive objective of the game is to prevent your opponents from potting their winks by squopping them: shooting your own winks to land on top of your opponents' winks. As part of strategic gameplay, players often attempt to squop their opponents' winks and develop, maintain and break up large piles of winks.
Tiddlywinks is sometimes considered a simple-minded, frivolous children's game, rather than a sophisticated strategic game. However, the modern competitive game of tiddlywinks made a strong comeback at the University of Cambridge in 1955. The modern game uses far more complex rules and a consistent set of high-grade equipment.
Etymology
Tiddlywinks derives from British rhyming slang for an unlicensed public house or a small inn only licensed to sell beer and cider. Tiddly was slang for an alcoholic drink. It may be related to pillywinks.Rules
Tiddlywinks is a competitive game involving four colours of winks. Each player controls the winks of a 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 ordinarily placed on a table, and a pot is placed at its centre. There are two primary methods of play with the four colours of winks: a pairs game, and a singles game. The pairs game involves four players, playing in partnerships, with each winker playing a single colour. The singles game involves a single winker playing against another single winker, each playing two colours of winks in alternation.The players take turns, and there are two basic aims: to cover opponent winks, and to get one's own winks into the pot. As in pool or snooker, if a player pots a wink of their own colour, they are entitled to an extra shot, and this enables a skilled player to pot all of their winks in one turn. The point of squopping, which is the key element distinguishing the modern competitive game from the child's game, is that a wink that is covered may not be played by its owner. The wink on top may be played, though, and sophisticated play involves shots manipulating large piles of winks.
The game ends in one of two ways: either all the winks of one colour are potted, or play continues up to a specified time limit, 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.
Strategy
The important appeal of the game for many players is the required combination of manual dexterity and strategic thought as well as tactics. Tiddlywinkers often claim that the game combines physical skill with the strategy of chess. Tiddlywinks is unique in the combination of skill and strategy it requires. Strategy in tiddlywinks is often rather deep, since winks can be captured by squopping them. 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; it does not merely run 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.
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, with specified diameters at the top and the base, and specified height. The winks are made 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 that seen on cheap moulded winks.The mats are made of thick felt. 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 or purchased from squidger makers. A player may use as many as they like, selecting an appropriate squidger for each shot. Top players may carry up to twenty different squidgers, but will not typically use all of them in one game. The rules governing squidgers permit a range of dimensions, and the material is not specified, except for the condition that squidgers must not damage either the winks or the mat. Modern squidgers are predominantly made from different types of plastic, though antique ones were made from bone, vegetable ivory, and other materials. Squidgers are usually filed or sanded to form a sharp edge and then polished.
Terminology
Selected terms used in the game include:Blitz: an attempt to pot all six winks of a given player's 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 a right angle to its normal plane
Carnovsky /Penhaligon : potting a wink from the baseline
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 with the intent of destroying the pile
Gromp: an attempt to jump a pile onto another wink
John Lennon memorial shot: a simultaneous boondock and squop
Lunch: to pot a squopped wink
Scrunge : to bounce out of the pot
Squidger: the disc used to shoot a wink
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
Tiddlies: points calculated when determining the finishing placement of winkers in a tiddlywinks game
History
Nineteenth century
The game began as a parlour game in Victorian England. Bank clerk Joseph Assheton Fincher filed the original patent application for the game in 1888 and applied for the trademark Tiddledy-Winks in 1889. John Jaques and Son were the exclusive distributors of the game named Tiddledy-Winks.However, competition was quite fierce, and for several years starting in 1888 other game publishers came out with their own versions of the game using other names, including Spoof, Flipperty Flop, Jumpkins, Golfette, Maro, Flutter, and many others. It became one of the most popular crazes during the 1890s, played by adults and children alike.
Throughout its history, many different varieties were produced to meet the marketplace demands, including those combining tiddledy-winks principles with tennis, basketball, baseball, croquet, cricket, football, golf, and other popular sports and endeavours. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the public perception of the game changed.
Competition organisations
There are two national associations, the English Tiddlywinks Association and the North American Tiddlywinks Association,. These organisations are responsible for conducting tournaments and maintaining the rules of the game. International competition is overseen by the International Federation of Tiddlywinks Associations, founded on 16 June 1963 though in practice it is rarely called upon to intervene.Although tiddlywinks nowadays is a singles or pairs game, competition in the 1950s until the 2000s centred on team competition, with teams consisting of several pairs. There were a number of 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 United States. The World Singles and World Pairs championships operate on a challenge basis; anyone winning a national tournament is entitled to challenge the current champion.
There are several other less prestigious tournaments in England and the United States throughout the year, often with a format designed to encourage inexperienced players. The results of tournaments and world championship matches are used to calculate Tiddlywinks Ratings, which give a ranking of players.
1950s
The birth of the modern game can be traced to a group of Cambridge University undergraduates meeting in Christ's College on 16 January 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; although the two universities had been playing matches since 1946. In 1957, an article appeared in The Spectator entitled "Does Prince Philip cheat at tiddlywinks?" Sensing a good publicity opportunity the Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club challenged Prince Philip 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, designed and made by Robert Welch for the British Universities Championship.The English Tiddlywinks Association was founded on 12 June 1958 with the Reverend Edgar "Eggs" Ambrose Willis as its first Secretary-General.