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Tiddley Winks

Posted 14 months ago|5 comments|722 views
The worst game ever invented
Written by
Paper Tiger
England
While walking around a car boot sale I spotted a game of Tiddley Winks. It has to be the most boring, unimaginable "game" the has ever been invented since time began. Some people may remember this silly little game and the hours of misery it caused. If you had any relations that hated children, you can bet, they would buy you a game of Tiddley Winks for Christmas.

Then to rub salt into the wounds, the child hater would turn up at your house for the day, and your parents made you get the game out and play it. My brother and I would set the game up and use the big Tiddley Wink to tiddley a little wink into a tiny little pot. It was impossible to hit the target.

So this game started with an arguement as to who would have what colour. My favourite colour was blue and so was my brothers. So there would be fighting and whinging for the first ten minutes. If you lost that battle, as I always did because my brother was older than me, I had a choice of green, red or yellow. I did not want any of those colours so the game started with me not wanting to tiddley wink with one of those colours.

I would look at my brother and hate him for having the blue tiddley wink. That made me determined to beat him. The game would start. If anyone doesn't know the rules, I don't believe this person exists, you had to press the big tiddley wink on to the small tiddley wink and make it flip into a tiny little pot. I'm not sure I have ever seen it done? But if you took your eye off the game for a second, the pot would be filled with little blue tiddley winks.

That would cause another arguement, I would accuse my brother of cheating, he would deny it and another scrap broke out. Even if the game was supervised it was still horrible, because it was so hard. Even if it had been easy it was a rotton game. The game would end, as it always did, with you flipping the wink all over the place and follow it around the house. Even while I am writing this I am getting angry about not having the blue ones.
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COMMENTS
georgeberaobama
georgeberaobama
Blakely Island, WA
14 months ago: Tiddlywinks is a serious game it is governed bythe North American Tiddlywinks Association.
Here are a set of rules.

Simplified Rules of Tiddlywinks
by Charles Relle
(US Edition, 10 January 1999)

Tiddlywinks is a partnership game for four colors of winks. In singles, each player has two colors. In pairs, each player has one color.

The colors are Blue, Green, Red and Yellow. Each color has four small winks and two large winks.

Blue always partners Red and Green always partners Yellow. At the start of the game, each color is placed at a corner of the mat so that Blue is opposite Red and Green is opposite Yellow. The colors must be arranged so that alphabetical order runs clockwise. This makes it easier to remember whose turn it is.

The pot is placed in the middle of the mat.

To play the winks you have a squidger, a counter from 1 inch to 2 inches in diameter.

To decide who starts, one wink of each color is played towards the pot. This is called the squidge-off. The color nearest the pot wins the start. All winks are then taken back to the corners and play begins. Play goes clockwise.

Say Green wins the start. Green begins the game, then Red plays, then Yellow, then Blue, then Green again, and so on.

You can play your winks in any order.

You have one shot per turn, with an extra shot for each wink of your own color that you pot. If a wink balances on the rim of the pot, it is counted as potted and is put in the pot.

If you send one (or more!) of your own winks off the mat, you lose your next shot. This means that if you are Blue and send a blue wink off the mat, you lose the next Blue shot. The wink is put back on the table where it went off, but must be 10cm from any other wink. If you send off a red wink (the partner color), or an opponent wink, nobody loses a shot.

Squopping: A wink is squopped if it is covered, even very slightly, by another wink. Sometimes you need to get an umpire to decide this. A squopped wink cannot be played. But you can play the top wink of any pile, provided it is yours, and follow through to any wink directly underneath it. Look at this diagram:

Red cannot play the red wink, and Green cannot play the green wink. Blue can play the blue wink. Blue can also hit the green wink in the follow through from playing blue. Blue must not hit red because the blue wink is not over the red. Now imagine that the top wink is a red rather than a blue. Red can play the top red wink, and follow through to the green one. But Red cannot touch the bottom red wink.

Free turns. If your color is squopped out (all its winks squopped), you cannot play. If this happens to you and your partner, the opponents cannot go on having turns for ever. They are allowed as many free turns as they have winks on the mat not covering or covered. This does not include winks that have not been played at all or potted winks. During or at the end of the free turns, they must free at least one wink of your side, and let it have a turn. Not until after that can they squop it again.

6. If a player pots out (all winks in the pot), all squopped (covered) winks are desquopped, and squopping ceases. Everyone goes only for the pot (still in turn). If a wink is accidentally squopped, the squopping wink is moved clear by hand.

Scoring: Suppose one color has been potted out (all winks in the pot). That color scores 4 points, the second 2 points and the third 1 point. Fourth place gets zero. If a color is potted out, the game is always played to a finish (all 12 winks of one side potted). Then one point is transferred from the losing side to the winning side. Here is an example: Green pots out, then Red, then Yellow.

Green gets 4
Reds gets 2
Yellow gets 1
Blue gets 0
One point is transferred from Blue/Red to Green/Yellow, so they beat Blue/Red 6 – 1.

BUT there is a time limit, 25 minutes for pairs games a
Paper Tiger
Paper Tiger
England
14 months ago: Squidger, squidge-off, Squopping, desquopped, I have never heard any of these terms in my life.

Also there the North American Tiddlywinks Association.
get a life.

Abelink
Abelink
Carbonado, WA
14 months ago: The game started in the 1890's. The British journal Notes and Queries had a query in its 18 January 1890 issue "Can any of your correspondents inform me what is the derivation of the word 'kiddlewink,' or 'tiddledy winks'? A friend tells me in the Midland Counties it denotes a house where beer is sold without a licence. Lately a game has been introduced here bearing the name of 'Tiddledywinks."

The earliest documented American date for a published item actually using the word "tiddledy winks" is 14 August 1890, when McLoughlin Brothers copyrighted "Directions for Playing The American and English Game of Tiddledy Winks". (Tiddlywinks patents did not refer specifically to "tiddlywinks" or "tiddledy winks" until around 1949.) And so what was the difference between the American and English games? That shall remain a mystery for now. An element of intrigue is essential to any pursuit.

So now we know a bit about the history of the game.
Paper Tiger
Paper Tiger
England
14 months ago: This is starting to get a little bit interesting, how could a game like this be so well followed for such a long time.

Competition among games manufacturers for newer and better tiddlywinks sets and varieties was becoming quite fierce. In modern winks argot, any variation from the official modern tournament rules is deemed a perversion. The most successful perversions are tiddlywinks versions of sports, such as bowling, tennis, horseshoes, basketball, baseball, etc. (to be described in short order here). The early 1890s saw a patent frenzy to claim unique niches in the tiddlywinks marketplace.
Paper Tiger
Paper Tiger
England
Content Removed by Paper Tiger
14 months ago: What are you a child molester or something? Paper Tiger is code for child molester!

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