Tiddlywinks
At its simplest tiddlywinks is a game for up to four people, played on a flat felt mat. The object is to shoot a wink, a coloured disc, into a pot using a squidger, a larger disc, but there is also a defensive element to the game. This involves “squopping”, landing your disc over an opponent’s so effectively barring them from “squidging” their disc. Amongst aficionados it can be fiercely competitive, with regular tournaments held in Britain and the USA and even a world title.
The rules governing the modern version of the game were established on January 16, 1955 by a group of undergraduates who met at Christ’s College, Cambridge, determined to invent a game at which they could represent the Varsity. Their success attracted the attention of the then Duke of Edinburgh, who, in 1960, commissioned the “Silver Wink” trophy. Standing 15½ inches tall, topped with a ring inside of which is a silver rotating wink, it was presented in January 1961 to the English Tiddlywinks Association to be awarded to the winner of the all-British universities series of competitions. As many as 37 universities competed for the trophy in the 1960s.
However, the antecedents of the modern game of tiddlywinks can be traced back to the late 19th century, the heyday of the British parlour game. A provisional patent application for “a new and improved game” was delivered to Her Majesty’s Stationery Office on November 8, 1888, by the twenty-five year old, Hampshire born, Joseph Assheton Fincher, by then living at 9, Berners Street in London and describing himself as a “gentleman”.
The game, which Fincher called Tiddledy-Winks, was played with “counters or flippers made of wood, ivory, bone or other substance, and a bowl or vessel of any shape, made of wood, china, glass, ivory or other substance, the object of the said counters or flippers being to press the edge of a smaller set of counters provided for the purpose and so cause them to jump into the bowl or vessel placed in the centre of the table”. The application helpfully included illustrations of the technique required to flip the counters.
What was new about the game, Fincher claimed, was the use of a bowl and counters, the act of flipping the counter, and the use of one counter to flip another. It is not clear how or why he devised the game, but he did have an inventive streak, patenting in 1890 “improvements in Sleeve Links” as cufflinks were known at the time, although later had an application rejected in 1897 for improvements to a Candlestick. Sadly, he died aged 36 on a platform of Waterloo Station on July 14, 1900, having suffered “convulsions from congestion of the brain”.
Fincher engaged the distinguished London games manufacturer, Jaques and Son of Hatton Gardens, to publish the sets, which featured wooden winks cups hand-turned on a lathe by the company’s craftsmen. An early advertisement for the “splendid new game” called Tiddledy Winks appeared in The Evening Standard on March 1, 1889, with sets available for one shilling.
With Fincher’s patent accepted on October 19, 1889, and the trademark approved on March 6, 1890, Tiddledy Winks quickly became an established parlour game. It livened up many an evening, judging from an entry in the 17-year-old Lady Emily Lutyens’ diary for April 24, 1892: “After dinner we all played the most exciting game that ever was invented, called Tiddleywinks…to begin with, everyone begins to scream at the top of their voices and to accuse everyone else of cheating. Even I forgot my shyness and howled with excitement… I assure you no words can picture either the intense excitement or the noise. I almost scream in describing it”.
