Tiddlywinks: why play it and what is it like? From experience I can say that most people start as a joke, sometimes as students at school or college. The more important question is, Why did they go on? Here are some answers.
It is a good game. You will have to believe this, or try it out!
It is fun. This is the most important reason. You cannot take Tiddlywinks seriously, so you have to play it for fun.
There are no post-mortems. In many games, players endlessly discuss what might have been. At Tiddlywinks we just get on with the next game.
It is convivial: we often go down to the pub at lunch time and at the end of a tournament, even an important one.
How is a tiddlywinks game actually played? You spread a mat on an oblong table. The mat should be felt and the table six feet by three, but get the best surface you can, fairly but not too bouncy.
Put the winks (two large, 22 mm in diameter and four small, 16 mm in diameter) in the corners, in the clockwise order Blue, Green, Red, Yellow. Put the pot in the middle. Tiddlywinks is always a partnership game for all four colours. Blue partners Red; Green partners Yellow. You can play singles or doubles. In doubles each player controls one colour, in singles two. You play the winks with a larger counter called a squidger. This can be anything from 25 to 51mm in diameter.
Set a time limit (officially 20 minutes for singles and 25 for doubles).
Play one wink of each colour towards the pot. Whoever gets nearest the pot starts. Take these winks back.
You now start timing and play clockwise in turns. You can play your winks in any order.
Potting your own wink (Blue pots blue) gives you another shot with that colour.
Sending your own wink off the mat loses your next shot with that colour. You put the wink back on the table where it went off.
Squopping (landing on) another wink, however slightly, means that the squopped wink cannot be played. You are allowed to squop deliberately. You can also squop a wink that is squopping one of yours, and play a shot to free yours. Sometimes a pile of winks forms. Which are you allowed to play? You can play the top wink (assuming it is yours), which you must touch first, and then any wink under any part of it. This means that in a spread-out pile there will be some winks you are not allowed to touch.
Ending and scoring: If you pot all your winks, you win and score 4 points. Now you abandon the time limit and all squopped winks are moved flat on the mat. Play continues until both colours of one side have potted out. Second scores 2, third 1. Add partner colours’ scores together, and transfer one point from the losing to the winning partnership.
If time is up before anyone has potted out, you play enough turns to include the colour which started, then five more rounds. Now each potted wink counts 3 Tiddlies; each unsquopped wink 1 tiddly. Count the tiddlies for each colour. The highest count scores 4 points, second 2, third 1. Add partner colours’ scores together, but do not transfer a point. (We had to get tiddlies in somewhere!)
A match is usually decided by adding up the number of points scored in all the games.
Squopping is very important. First place wins the game, so you need to promote, or pot, only one of your two colours. You can use the other to squop, and so slow down, the opponents. This means that Tiddlywinks, like many good games, is one of attack and defence. You can even squop all the enemy winks, so that your opponents cannot play at all. If you do this, a special rule comes in. You are allowed as many free turns as you have winks not squopping or squopped, and then you must free and let the opponents play at least one shot. If you free before that, you must still let them play.
There are three basic shots to master, bringing in (remember you start 3 feet from the pot), potting, and squopping. They take a bit of time; as with all games, you have to be patient. With Tiddlywinks you have to be open-minded and tolerant too, because no-one will take you seriously. But what does that matter if you are having fun?
My pamphlet ‘Getting Started with Tiddlywinks’ at www.charlesrelle.org.uk/gettingstarted.html will give you more detailed information, including advice on shots and tactics. Look also at the English Tiddlywinks Association’s web site at www.etwa.org.
Charles Relle
