The origins of tiddlywinks, disreputable or otherwise, are shrouded in the mists of antiquity, but broadly speaking we can say there are now two types of tiddlywinks games. The earlier type is usually a potting race pure and simple (called Queensberry) and probably began in the 19th century. Modern tiddlywinks involves squopping (covering another’s wink), which transforms it into a complex tactical game, and it is the story of this game that is to be told here.Neoclassical tiddlywinks can date its birth from the foundation in January 1955 of the first club devoted entirely to tiddlywinks (or tw)—the Cambridge University Tw Club, created by a group of chemical engineering students, notably Bill Steen and Lawford Howells. Yet though tiddlywinks came to be taken seriously it was more of a stunt than it is today. These tiddly ancients were renowned less for their skill in playing the game than for their ingenuity in publicising it, though they would have been surprised to see the vast network of devoted winkers that now exists. In 1955 it was a complete novelty (as it still is to most people in 1963) that intelligent adults should form a club for crawling about on the floor playing what appears to be a childrens’ game, and being a novelty it was likely to die out when the curiosity it aroused began to wane. Tiddlywinks only survived outside the nursery because, with a new set of rules, it was found to be a skilful and engrossing game in its own right.

CUTwC began experimenting with a great variety of tw equipment; most sets contained winks of curious colours and varying sizes and weights. Ordinary eggcups often did service as pots. Added to these hazards was the difficulty of finding opponents: when there is only one tw club in the world, who does it play against? CUTwC sent challenges to many well-known people, without much success. It is said that the club wrote to the Goons, offering to play them “anytime, anywhere, at your own convenience”, to which the Goons replied that their convenience was unfortunately too small for a game of tiddlywinks. At last came a match against a team called the Whitcomb Winkers, consisting mainly of West End showgirls, organised by Noel Whitcomb of the Daily Mirror. During the 3 years 1955-57 CUTwC played (and won) 3 matches: against the Whitcomb Winkers, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, and Westminster College.

In the Lent and Easter terms of 1955, Bill Steen and his team of tiddle-addicts invaded Eaden Lilley’s store in Cambridge, and carried out experiments on their varied range of carpets in an endeavour to find the best playing surface. Later,they published an enterprising Thesis entitled The Science of Tiddlywinks. This gave the results of painstaking research into the effects of different types of carpets, squidgers and winks. They analysed the effects on play due to spin, the player, the physical atmosphere (density of the air, humidity, temperature, draughts), and the mental atmosphere (wine, women, song). There was a test to show the effects on one’s potting of dividing one’s attention, for instance by having to hold a conversation while winking: ‘The players gave a lecture on The Origin Of The Earth or Plastics In Industry while trying to sink 6-inch shots’. Among the Appendices were the then Rules; Rule 8, for example, read ‘A tiddlywink is deemed as played if it is observed by a majority of persons who observed the shot to have left the pitch (carpet)’. The Thesis also contained a short Historical Survey: ‘… owing to the simplicity of the materials required it is quite possible that Stone Age Man had the occasional squidge while chipping flints. At this early period man was not able to comprehend rules, and also the counters used would not jump well except upon moss—a possible explanation of the number of bodies found in bogs… Carpets and blankets became plentiful during the Industrial Revolution; it is therefore suggested that it was about the beginning of the 19th century that the game started in earnest…’

In October 1957 the Spectator published an article headed Does Prince Philip Cheat At Tiddlywinks? Leaping to the Duke’s defence at this unkind insinuation, CUTwC challenged him to a match to prove his honesty at tw. He accepted the challenge, but instead of playing in person preferred to use the Royal privilege of appointing his champions—the Goons. The match took place at the Guildhall, Cambridge, on March 1st 1958. A helicopter normally used for pest control stood by to whisk Harry Secombe off to Coventry afterwards. The occasion was a victory not only for the Cambridge team but for the game of tiddlywinks. After 3 years of quiet existence tw at last caught the public’s imagination, for the match was widely reported. There soon developed a stream of letters, enquiries, and requests for information about tw. By 1958 one or two other tw clubs were being formed, notably one at Oxford; but it was the blaze of publicity from the Goons game that really got tw going on its course of expansion. That match also brought about the happy association between tw and some of its benefactors: Guinness and Co became interested, Showerings supplied CUTwC with Babycham as a training diet since Babycham bottle-tops

Start of page 7 were light blue, Marchant Games Ltd offered the Goons winks with which to practice, and provided sets for the match, while Prince Philip and the National Playing Fields Association began their connection with tw. It seemed that tiddlywinks was at the threshold of a new era.

The First World Tiddlywinks Congress was held at Christ’s College, Cambridge, on June 11th and 12th, 1958; it was organised by Lawford Howells and Bill Steen, and attended by the Rev. E.A. Willis and representatives of Cambridge, Oxford and Bristol Universities. Its main task was to formulate a set of International Rules, for as in any growing and virile activity there were several differences regarding the mode of play. The pre-Congress rules as played by Cambridge in 1958 were somewhat different to those laid down in the 1955 Thesis; by 1958 the surface was required to be ‘an isotropic compressible medium’, the cup an ‘inverted frustrum of a cone’, the points for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th were 5, 3, 2 and 1, and potting was known as ‘cupping’. Oxford had their own version of the Rules, which precluded squopping, and this led to the greatest controversy at the Congress—should squopping be allowed? The squoppers had their way. It was at this Congress that the Rules as we know them today (save for a few subsequent amendments) were drawn up. Congress also decided that tw should be associated with a suitable charity—the National Playing Fields Association; by 1963 tw events had raised over £1000 for the NPFA. The English Tiddlywinks Association was founded, and Rev. Willis appointed its first Secretary-General. The Congress was most informal; no Minutes were taken and no ETwA Constitution written down.

Marchant Games Ltd undertook to manufacture sets of tiddlywinks with the new Rules; the firm did not venture into this field in order to make big profits (for sales were expected to be small) but rather as a service to the game. Even in mid-1958 after the Congress tw enthusiasts did not anticipate the rapidity with which the game has in fact spread.

As more people took up this noble sport, attention became focussed on the game itself, and its devotees took it a little more seriously, putting the accent on winning rather than on getting publicity. Organised tournaments began to develop; the Northern Junior Tw Championships have been particularly successful. This competition was started in January 1959, when 58 pairs from northern schools entered; it is now held annually on a knockout basis, and the standard of skill exhibited is very high. ETwA officially recognised Record Performances, and these are often used as sideshows for spectators at tw events. In February 1959 the first annual Inter-Varsity match took place, with the All-England Championship Cup, presented by Marchant Games, at stake; the match attracted such people as Stirling Moss and Danny Blanchflower as umpires, and was followed by a lavish Tiddlywinks Ball.

The continual efforts to repeat the success of the Goons match came to fruition on 24th March 1959. Billed as the World Championship Tiddlywinks Match, Cambridge University (‘Champions of the Universe’) played the challengers, The Empress Club (nominated by Prince Philip). The latter celebrated team included Denis Compton, Terry-Thomas and three Lords, and was led by General Sir Hugh Stockwell. The fame of this match, which raised £496.11.6d for the NPFA, resounded round the world; thus a report of it appeared in a Western Australia newspaper, which added that ‘Tiddlywinks is the most upper-class of games in England. Its patron is the Duke of Edinburgh, and its players include the intellectual cream of the universities, titled young men, and the Goons.’ Yet this game, which Cambridge under Peter Downes won by a huge margin, didn’t create quite the same stir as the immortal Goons match.

The next major tw match was the first International, England versus Wales, at Bristol on June 8th. Bill Steen, once described as ‘the W.G. Grace of tiddlywinks’, and having just taken over the Secretary-Generalship of ETwA, led the English side; his ex-Cambridge colleague Lawford Howells captained the Welshmen. The English pairs returned scores of 22, 22, 17 and 17 to win 78-34.

By the second half of 1959 tw had spread far beyond the limited circle who had kept the game alive only a year before. Clubs existed in many universities and schools and more were coming into being. There was no sign that the urge to squidge was in any way declining. On the contrary, so skilled were winkers at potting and squopping that (to quote a Stockport newspaper) they ‘made the game look like child’s play.’ So much was happening winkwise that for the crowded 1960s the chronicler can select for discussion only a few of the outstanding tiddly events.

At the beginning of 1960 ETwA challenged the Scottish Tw Association, which in those days was newly formed and under the care of J. K. P. Watson, to the now-defunot title of Victor Tiddlywinkorum of the British Isles. Guinness and Co. became interested in the prospect of regular International matches, and presented a handsome silver trophy, the Bombay Bowl. The match was arranged for May 7th, on the Start of page 8

Esplanade of Edinburgh Castle. Efforts to attire the Englishmen in top hats, black cloaks, and a dagger each, fell through, but the team toured Edinburgh before and after the match in a landau with a top-hatted coachman, posthorn, and trombone. The Scots wore kilts, bowties, sweaters and lowland bonnets, and were piped onto the Esplanade with their standard-bearer and the umpires—to no avail, for the kilted Scots were beaten 39-73. Subsequent International matches were rather less flambuoyant, but strategy had developed a stage further and interest veered more towards the subtleties inherent in the game itself.

In the summer of 1960 Peter Downes returned to England after a year in Paris, where he learned that the French temperament is unsuited to tiddlywinks. He took over from Bill Steen as Sec-Gen of ETwA, and the first task he set himself was the compilation of a list of all tw clubs known to exist. The list appeared in October, and included a note on ETwA Records and various tw championships. This publication was the forerunner of Winking World, and its importance lies in the fact that for the first time the tw movement ceased to be local and became truly national. Winkers at one end of the country knew what was happening at the other end, and this process developed further when Winking World No. 1 appeared in February 1961 ; the Journal proved to be a vitally important line of communication among winkers.

Prince Philip gave the handsome Silver Wink trophy in 1960, which Oxford were the first to win. The third International was held at Manchester in October 1961, England again defeating Scotland.

1960-62 saw the controversy over double-squop (d. s.). This strategy was pioneered by Oxford, partly in an endeavour to defeat Cambridge. The latter were dismayed at the effect d. s. had on the game; at first it made tw tedious to players and spectators alike—many games reached stalemate, and an Oxford-Bristol patch was abandoned after 5 hours 20 minutes with 3 games still unplayed. It was argued that d. s. discourages potting, whereas ‘the aim of the game is to flick the winks into the pot’. To some, d. s. threatened to be the ruin of tw. Their worst fears were confirmed when the annual Inter-Varsity match in February 1961 involved so much double-squopping that it was described as a ‘total squop’. (It was also the first match that CUTwC ever lost.) The total squop of this match, and the difficulty of performing a fair desquopping shot, led to the suggestion in Winking World that squopped winks be replaced at the base-line. This ‘Cleaner Winks Campaign’ met opposition from all sides and the idea was dropped. The solution was found in a much less radical change: potted winks counted for 3 time-limit points instead of 2. This simple alteration in January 1963 put the premium on potting again, while d. s. was not seriously curtailed. There is now a wide view that d. s. has been brought under control, for it pays to pot in the endgame even when playing d. s. Quite apart from being successful as regards sheer results, d.s. adds considerably to the tactical depth of tw, and has made the game a greater intellectual challenge.

Four Oxford winkers toured the United States in the summer vacation of 1962, kindling tiddly interest over there, and the game ‘is well on the way to becoming a national past-time’. Lawford Howells was last heard of squopped up in Bagdad, while Bill Steen has taken his winks to India. In England, so great was interest in the game that by the end of 1962 the informal organisation of ETwA set up at the 1958 Congress had become quite inadequate; the Secretary-General ruled as a benevolent despot, and the accounts were in the red. The 1963 Congress was called to resolve these difficulties. Tiddlywinks, now reorganised, stands ready for new advances.