Tiddlywinks Chronology

1947

Early reports of tiddlywinks play at Cambridge University in England

1954 • November

The beginnings of enduring tiddlywinks activity at Cambridge University, led by Bill Steen and R. C. Martin

Keywords • history
Source • On the Mat by Guy Consterdine

1955 • January 15

The Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club (CUTwC) is formed

Keywords • club
Source • On the Mat by Guy Consterdine

1955 • June 14

First match (CUTwC vs. Whitcomb’s Winkers) played under modern squopping rules

Keywords • tournament

1956

Marchant Trophy (teams championship) established

Keywords • trophy

1958 • 13 June

The English Tiddlywinks Association (ETwA) is founded

Keywords • Club

1958 • March 1

CUTwC plays The Goons, representing Prince Philip, garnering substantial publicity

Keywords • tournament– publicity
Source • Winks Rampant, by Guy Consterdine

1958 • May 9

First CUTwC vs. OUTS match

Keywords • tournament

1958 • June 11-12

Official rules of tiddlywinks agreed upon at First World Congress
Keywords • rules
Source • Winking World 7, March 1965

1958

4-2-1 scoring system defined for first, second, and third place finishers in a game (but there’s still no point transfer for a putout)

Keywords • rules

1958

Free turns are now limited to the number of free winks after the squop-up (UK term; US term is squop-out)

Keywords • rules

1958

The time limit in a game is optional; games were usually played until a potout

Keywords • rules

1958

Marchant Games-supplied equipment becomes official tournament standard

Keywords • equipment

1960

First Varsity Match held, Cambridge vs. Oxford

Keywords • tournament

1960

Oxford introduces double squop strategy at Cambridge-Oxford match

Keywords • play

1960

Time limit (to be agreed upon by team captains) introduced as a result of the double squop strategy (previously games ended via potouts)

Keywords • rules

1961 • January

Prince Phillip created the Silver Wink Trophy (made by Robert Welch) for the winner of the British university team championships

1961

Xylophone freeing shot outlawed; current rule for desquopping introduced (can hit additional winks only if they are directly below the top wink hit first)

Keywords • rules

1961 • February 1

Winking World, an official ETwA publication, first appears

Keywords • publication

1962 • August to September

Four winkers from the Oxford University Tiddlywinks Society (OUTS) tour the United States, sponsored by Guinness Stout and others

Keywords • tournament – publicity
Source • Oxford Tour of U.S.• 1962

1962

British winkers attend university in Canada and start “pre-NATwA” winks teams

1962

Steve Carnovsky pots 4 out of 5 from the line during a Harvard team practice; the source of the name for the Carnovsky shot.

Keywords • history – lexicon
Reference • Life magazine, 14 December 1962

1962 • December 14

Article on Harvard tiddlywinks  match appears in Life, a prominent US magazine.

Keywords • publicity

1963

Time limit points increased from 2 to 3 for a potted wink (to encourage more potting)

Keywords • rules

1963

Addition of five extra rounds after the time limit for a game expires

Keywords • rules

1963

Rule change to only lose one turn no matter how many of your own winks sent off the mat

Keywords • rules

1963 • June 16

The International Federation of Tiddlywinks Associations is established

1965

Baselines are added to mats

Keywords • equipment

1965

Point transfer for potting out introduced to the  rules

Keywords • rules

1965

Squidge-off winner ends rounds added to rules

Keywords • rules

1966 • February 27

The North American Tiddlywinks Association (NATwA) is founded

Keyword • club

1969 • April

Newswink, an official NATwA publication, first appears

Keywords • publication

1969 • (approximately)

Sharp squidgers become prevalent in England when Keith Seaman develops a method for machining them

Keywords • equipment

1969

First published discussion about the possible advantage of dominant corners, in Winking World

Keywords • play – lexicon

1970 • May 2-3

First NATwA National Pairs tournament held

Keywords • tournament

1970 • (approximately; may have been 1969)

Bristol shot developed at Bristol University in England

Keywords • play

1971 • April 4

The first ETwA National Singles tournament was completed, then called the Open Singles, and held on multiple dates starting in 1970
Keywords • tournament

Source • Winking World 19, July 1971

1972 • March toApril

MIT tour of England; sharp squidgers brought back to USA; boondock strategy “exported” to England

Keywords • play

1972

Tournament games no longer played on the floor

Keywords • play

1972

First ETwA National Pairs tournament held

Keywords • tournament

1972 • May

First NATwA National Singles tournament held

Keywords • tournament

1972

Good shot (desquop using wink adjacent to the pile) invented by John Good at MIT

Keywords • play

1973 • June 23-24

First World Singles match played

Keywords • tournament

1974 • (approximately)

Two-ply grey felt mats are no longer made; a new source is found for single-ply, all-white felt mats

Keywords • equipment

1975 • (approximately)

Increasing popularity of using a more wide-open, long squopping strategy as an option to pure “positional” play

Keywords • play

1976 • February

Sunshine publishes rules of tiddlywinks perversions in Alleghany Airlines Book Club Presents

1976

NATwA establishes 30 second rule (clock stops automatically after 30 seconds pass without a shot); the opponents of the winker shooting have no choice in whether to stop it or not)

Keywords • rules

1977

Original red tapered pot supply almost gone; NATwA pot mold commissioned by Charles Frankston from a manufacturer in Brooklyn, New York (late 1976) and “new” pot production begins

Keywords • equipment

1978 • July 17

First World Pairs match played

Keywords • tournaments

1978

Squidger diameter limited to between 1 and 2 inches

Keywords • rules

1979

Joe Sachs popularizes squop-style bring-ins

Keywords • play

1979

“Foreign visitor” rule for World Pairs and Singles challenges agreed upon; however national title still goes to the highest national finisher even if the foreigner finishes first

Keywords • rules

1980

ETwA winker Pam Knowles’ NATwA Singles win prompts consensus change that national titles go to winner (foreign or not); highest national finisher also gets world challenge (as was decided previously)

Keywords • rules

1981

30 second rule (to stop clock) revised to be the choice of the opponents of the winker currently playing; adopted by NATwA and ETwA

Keywords • rules

1981

Free turns rule clarified so that free turns occurring before the end of the time limit do not go into rounds

Keywords • rules

1981

Length of games before rounds standardized at 20 minutes for singles and 25 minutes for pairs (previously ETwA used 20 minutes for both and NATwA 25 minutes for both)

Keywords • rules

1981

NATwA and ETwA rules “converge” (with a few minor exceptions)

Keywords • rules

1982

“Personalized” winks banned for tournament games (a result of Charles Relle using a flattened set of winks created using Larry Kahn’s boiling method)

Keywords • equipment

1982

“New” Italian winks introduced

Keywords • equipment

1984

Megacrud blowup shot outlawed; 2 inch jab rule introduced (ETwA)

Keywords • rules

1985 • November

American tour of England

Keywords • tournament

1986 • (may have been 1987)

Bristol (also known as Cambridge) Good shot developed at CUTwC

Keywords • play

1987 • (approximately)

First use of flexible squidgers for potting nurdled winks. (After Jon Mapley introduces his Sainsbury mint jelly top squidger, Nick Inglis inadvertently buys a different brand with a very flexible lid).

Keywords • equipment

1987

“Push” pile shot (no downward motion) ruled not in the spirit of the game, leading to better rules wording for the definition of a legal shot.

Keywords • rules

1988 • September

British tour of the United States

Keywords • tournament

1990

British tour of the United States

Keywords • tournament

1990

Winker Ratings (from Nick Inglis) first published in Winking World (best rant material ever)

1990

“Nominated wink” rule for failure to free incorporated in official rules (proposed by Rules Committee in 1989)

Keywords • rules

1991 • June

25th anniversary celebration of NATwA in Gill, Massachusetts

Keyword • celebration

1992

The term tiddlies replaces time limit points, providing the answer to the common question, “If those are the winks, what’s a tiddly?”

Keywords • rules

1993

First Scottish National Pairs tournament

Keywords • tournament

1993

“Playing out of turn” rule refined so that offended party decides which color to shoot next

Keywords • rules

2004

Major rewrite of official rules to make them easier to read/understand and to clarify some of the more complicated situations (the problem of piles crossing the boundary has yet to be solved)

Keywords • rules

2005 • January

50th anniversary celebration of modern winks and the first modern tiddlywinks club, the Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club

Keywords • celebration

2006 • July

NATwA celebrates its 40th anniversary with events at Cornell and elsewhere in Ithaca, New York

Keywords • celebration

2008 • 1 March

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the famed Goons vs. CUTwC Royal Tiddlywinks Match of 1958, Prince Philip designates the Savage Club to be his royal champions to play CUTwC in Cambridge, England

Keywords • celebration

2009 • 10 January

The first triples tournament is held in the UK: the London Triples

Keywords • tournament

2016 • August

NATwA celebrates its 50th anniversary with events in Montague, Massachusetts and Vienna, Virginia

Keywords • celebration