Tiddlywinks - History

History

The game began as an adult parlour game in Victorian England. Joseph Assheton Fincher filed the original patent application for the game in 1888 and applied for the trademark Tiddledy-Winks in 1889. John Jaques and Son were the exclusive distributors of the game named Tiddledy-Winks. However, competition was quite fierce, and for several years starting in 1888 other game publishers came out with their own versions of the game using other names, including Spoof, Flipperty Flop, Jumpkins, Golfette, Maro, Flutter, and many others. It became one of the most popular crazes during the 1890s, played by adults and children alike. In its earlier years, many different varieties were produced to meet the marketplace demands, including those combining tiddledy-winks principles with tennis, basketball, croquet, golf, and other popular sports and endeavours. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the public perception of the game changed.

The birth of the modern game can be traced to a group of Cambridge University undergraduates meeting in Christ's College on January 16, 1955. Their aim was to devise a sport at which they could represent the university. Within three years the Oxford University Tiddlywinks Society was formed; although the two universities had been playing matches since 1946. The English Tiddlywinks Association (ETwA) was founded in 1958. In the same year, an article appeared in The Spectator entitled "Does Prince Philip cheat at tiddlywinks?" Sensing a good publicity opportunity the Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club (CUTwC) challenged Prince Philip (later to become Chancellor of the University in 1976) to a tiddlywinks match to defend his honour. The Duke of Edinburgh appointed The Goons as his Royal champions. The Duke presented a trophy, the Silver Wink, for the British Universities Championship. During the 1960s as many as 37 universities were playing the game in Britain.

In 1962, the Oxford team toured the United States for several weeks under the sponsorship of Guinness. They were undefeated against teams from the New York Giants and various American colleges and newspapers. 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.

The North American Tiddlywinks Association (NATwA) was formed on February 27, 1966 with founders from both American (Harvard University and Harvard Medical School) and Canadian (University of Waterloo and Waterloo Lutheran University) teams.

In the meantime, 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. MIT and Cornell played in NATwA's tiddlywinks tournaments starting in February 1967, and became dominant. The Harvard and Waterloo teams disappeared from the scene by 1968. The game took particularly strong root at MIT, and the early development of most American players can still be traced to MIT today.

While the basic elements of the adult game were devised by CUTwC in its early years, the rules have continued to be modified under the auspices of the various national tiddlywinks associations. ETwA coordinated the game throughout the boom period of the 1960s when winks flourished. A decline in interest within the UK in 1969-1970 led to the establishment of the three national competitions which have been contested to date, namely the National Singles, National Pairs, and the Teams of Four. There are also annual Open Competitions, notably in Oxford, Cambridge and London.

The first serious trans-Atlantic contact was established in 1972, when a team from MIT toured the UK. The success of the Americans shocked complacent Britons. Competition started at the highest level, the World Singles, in 1973. A challenge system was agreed between ETwA and NATwA. The supreme ruling body in world contests is the International Federation of Tiddlywinks Associations (IFTwA). To challenge at the world level, a player must win one of the national titles, or finish as the highest placed home player behind a foreign winner. There have been over 60 World Singles contests to date. The Americans dominated all the early matches, and it was not until the 22nd contest when a Briton won for the first time. Since then the top Britons and Americans have been closely matched. After the establishment of the World Singles, a World Pairs event followed, and there have now been over 35 World Pairs contests. International matches have been played since 1972.

During its history, winks has enjoyed variable levels of interest. The game has never taken a strong hold outside the UK and North America. The focus of British tiddlywinks is still at Cambridge, and CUTwC's 50th anniversary celebrations in 2005 were well attended. The Oxford University Tiddlywinks Society has recently fallen out of existence. Despite this there has recently been some resurgence in the game, with new clubs having been formed recently in the University of York and in Shrewsbury School. In America, there has been a tradition of tiddlywinks in Washington DC, Boston, Eastern Ohio, and Ithaca, and a renewal of winks through the MIT Tiddlywinks Association. National competitions are well attended, with a group of enthusiastic young players joining the stock of veteran players who have proved themselves at the highest level in world competition. In the USA, the game has a firm footing in certain high schools, since the children of many of the players who took up the game in the late 1960s and early 1970s are now of high school age. These players are now looking to revive university tiddlywinks in the USA.

On March 1, 2008, there was a Royal Match in Cambridge to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the original Royal Match played against The Goons in 1958 (see above). CUTwC players took on HRH Prince Philip's Royal Champions, the Savage Club, with members of the original 1958 CUTwC team in attendance. Cambridge repeated their victory from 1958 by winning the match 24-18.