Tiddlywinks
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The Game
Tiddlywinks is a game played with sets of small, thin discs (called winks) lying on a surface, usually a felt mat. Players use a larger disc (called a squidger) to pop a smaller disc into flight by pressing down on one side of the smaller disc. The basic goal of an informal game (easily playable by young children) is to cause the smaller discs to land inside a pot or cup. The formal game has a more robust set of rules, goals, and strategies suitable to serious competition for adults and older children. A core element of the tournament game is the squop, where one wink covers another wink, thereby immobilizing it.
Game History
Past
The game began as Tiddledy-Winks, patented in 1889 and trademarked in 1890 by Joseph Assheton Fincher of London. John Jaques & Son in London were the exclusive publishers of the game for a number of years in the 1890s. However, the game quickly fell into the public domain. Tiddledy winks was a wildly popular parlour game throughout the 1890s in England and the United States, played by adults and children alike.
Present
The modern game of tiddlywinks was introduced in 1955 by Bill Steen and Rick Martin. These two Cambridge students wanted to play a game at which they could represent the university in a Varsity Match against Oxford.
Royalty
In 1958, Cambridge students challenged Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (later to become Chancellor of the University in 1976) to a tiddlywinks match. The Duke of Edinburgh appointed the Goons as his Royal champions. Later in 1958, the English Tiddlywinks Association (ETwA) was founded. A trophy, the Silver Wink, has been awarded by the Duke since 1961 to the British university champions each year.
USA Tour
In 1962, the Oxford team toured the United States for several weeks, going undefeated against teams from the New York Giants, various American colleges, newspapers, and others. 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.
1965 -
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 on February 27, 1966.The game is still played in Cambridge, England, but also around the UK and in North America, especially at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell, Harvard, and Ithaca High School in New York.
Contrary to popular belief, the modern game is a serious one. Much like snooker, croquet and curling, not only is physical skill required for wink placement, there is considerable strategy involved in preventing the opponent from making his best move. The rules of the game are dictated by the English Tiddlywinks Association.
External links
- [English Tiddlywinks Association]- founded in 1958
- [North American Tiddlywinks Association] - founded in 1966
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