Tiddlywinks
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| Years active | 1888 to present |
|---|---|
| Genre(s) | Board game |
| Players | usually 2 or 4; 6 for a triples match |
| Setup time | 1 minute |
| Playing time | 30 minutes to an hour |
| Random chance | Medium |
| Skill(s) required | Strategy, physical skill |
Tiddlywinks is an indoor game played on a flat felt mat with sets of small discs called "winks", a pot, which is the target, and a collection of squidgers, which are also discs. Players use a "squidger" (nowadays made of plastic) to shoot a wink into flight by flicking the squidger across the top of a wink and then over its edge, thereby propelling it into the air. The offensive objective of the game is to score points by sending your own winks into the pot. The defensive objective of the game is to prevent your opponents from potting their winks by "squopping" them: shooting your own winks to land on top of your opponents' winks. As part of strategic gameplay, players often attempt to squop their opponents' winks and develop, maintain and break up large piles of winks.
Tiddlywinks is sometimes considered a simpleminded, frivolous children's game, rather than a strategic, adult game. However, the modern competitive adult game of tiddlywinks made a strong comeback at the University of Cambridge in 1955. The modern game uses far more complex rules and a consistent set of high-grade equipment.
Tiddlywinks is a competitive game involving four colours of winks. Each player controls the winks of a colour, the colours being blue, green, red and yellow. Red and blue are always partners against green and yellow. There are six winks of each colour, which begin the game in the corners of a felt mat measuring 6 feet by 3 feet. This mat is ordinarily placed on a table, and a pot is placed at its centre. There are two primary methods of play with the four colors of winks: a pairs game, and a singles game. The pairs game involves four players, playing in partnerships, with each winker playing a single color. The singles game involves a single winker playing against another single winker, each playing two colors of winks in alternation.
The players take turns, and there are two basic aims: to cover (or squop) opponent winks, and to get one's own winks into the pot. As in pool or snooker, if a player pots a wink of his own colour, then he is entitled to an extra shot, and this enables a skilled player to pot all of his winks in one turn. The point of squopping, which is the key element distinguishing the adult game from the child's game (though recognized in even the earliest rules from 1890), is that a wink that is covered (even partially) may not be played by its owner. The wink on top may be played, though, and sophisticated play involves shots manipulating large piles of winks.
The game ends in one of two ways: either all the winks of one colour are potted (a pot-out), or play continues up to a specified time limit (usually 25 minutes), after which each colour has a further five turns. Then a scoring system is used to rank the players, based on the numbers of potted and unsquopped winks of each colour.
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Wikipedia