More Tiddlywinks
Commercial and societal success of Fincher’s Tiddledy-Winks came with perils. First there were counterfeiters, Jaques and Son having to resort to affixing a notice on the inside of the box warning of cheap imitations. Then there were competitors, with a surge in games launched on to the market which were based on counters and flippers.
One such was Flitterkins devised by Harold Wilson and Alice Margary and also published by Jaques and Sons, described as “A Modification of Lawn Tennis Forming and Indoor Game”, played with a counter rather than a ball. It was granted a patent (GB 1888/18789A) on March 16, 1889, seven months before Fincher received his, making it the first tiddlywinks-based patent to be issued in the world. However, Fincher’s provisional submission was made a month and a half before the Flitterkins submission.
Another variant was Spoof, produced by F H Ayres of 111. Aldergate Street in London, copyrighted on November 6, 1888 and first published six days earlier, a week before Fincher’s initial provisional submission. Described as “a new and interesting game”, players had six counters (Men) of the same colour which they tried to flip with a larger counter (the Spoof) into a Spoof cup. Each player would take it in turns to shot all their men, the winner being the player who shot the most in an agreed time into the cup. Sporting variants such as Spoof Golf, Cricket, Tennis, Croquet, and Quoits were marketed until the turn of the century.
The third patent granted in England for a tiddlywinks-style game was for George Scott’s Golfette or Table Golf, awarded on March 22, 1890, shortly after Fincher’s. It consisted of a course made from felt or other elastic material, a series of hazards to be placed across the course and some “springers” or clubs used to propel counters around the field of play. The object, as in golf, was to sink the counter in the hole in the fewest shots. Scott also secured the first US patent for a tiddlywinks game.
Another notable games manufacturer, J W Spear & Sons, published variations around the tiddlywinks theme including Sweet Wedding Bells where winks were shot to ring a bell in a bell tower, North Pole where players fired their counters on to a map with the aim of getting to the pole, and Over the Garden Wall where counters were propelled over a wall with players scoring a point if they landed on the grass, two in the flower beds, three on the path, and five in the pond. Chronowinks added some jeopardy in 1891, with each game limited to the time it took all of the sand to drop from the top of an hourglass.
From tiddledywinks and then tidley winks, the spelling soon settled down as tiddlywinks. Perhaps there was an initial reluctance to use tiddlywinks as it was a slang term for an unlicensed public house selling beer and hard cider, a “wayside mart”, observed Bailey’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes in October 1863, “where poachers congregated and flash men came to make inquiries about the architectural contrivances of the neighbouring mansions”.
On the B4039 near the village of Yatton Keynell, about three miles northwest of Chippenham lies the hamlet of Tiddlywink, so called, apparently, because beer was sold from one of its cottages to passing cattle drovers. Having had their bid for recognition “squopped” by the Bartholomew Gazeteer of Places in Britain and its successor, Collins British Atlas and Gazeteer, the residents finally “squidged” their wink when they were granted permission to erect two road signs in February 2003.
There is more to tiddlywinks than meets the eye.
