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‘Squopping and squidging’: Who invented tiddlywinks?

Martin Fone Martin Fone

Today's Curious Question takes a look at one of the nation's favourite parlour games.

At its simplest, tiddlywinks is a game for up to four people, played on a flat felt mat. The object is to shoot a wink — a coloured disc — into a pot using a squidger — a larger disc — but there is also a defensive element to the game. This involves ‘squopping’, landing your disc over an opponent’s so effectively barring them from ‘squidging’ their disc. Among aficionados it can be fiercely competitive, with regular tournaments held in Britain and the US and even a world title. 

The rules governing the modern version of the game were established on January 16, 1955 by a group of undergraduates who met at Christ’s College, Cambridge, determined to invent a game at which they could represent the Varsity. Their success attracted the attention of the then Duke of Edinburgh, who, in 1960, commissioned the ‘Silver Wink’ trophy. Standing 15½ inches tall, topped with a ring inside of which is a silver rotating wink, it was presented in January 1961 to the English Tiddlywinks Association to be awarded to the winner of the all-British universities series of competitions. As many as 37 universities competed for the trophy in the 1960s.

However, the antecedents of the modern game of tiddlywinks can be traced back to the late 19th century, the heyday of the British parlour game. A provisional  patent application for ‘a new and improved game’ was delivered to Her Majesty’s Stationery Office on November 8, 1888, by the 25-year-old, Hampshire-born, Joseph Assheton Fincher, by then living at 9, Berners Street in London and describing himself as a ‘gentleman’.

The game, which Fincher called Tiddledy-Winks, was played with ‘counters or flippers made of wood, ivory, bone or other substance, and a bowl or vessel of any shape, made of wood, china, glass, ivory or other substance, the object of the said counters or flippers being to press the edge of a smaller set of counters provided for the purpose and so cause them to jump into the bowl or vessel placed in the centre of the table’. The application helpfully included illustrations of the technique required to flip the counters.

What was new about the game, Fincher claimed, was the use of a bowl and counters, the act of flipping the counter, and the use of one counter to flip another. It is not clear how or why he devised the game, but he did have an inventive streak, patenting in 1890 ‘improvements in Sleeve Links’ as cufflinks were known at the time, although later had an application rejected in 1897 for improvements to a candlestick. Sadly, he died aged 36 on a platform of Waterloo Station on July 14, 1900, having suffered ‘convulsions from congestion of the brain’.

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Fincher engaged the distinguished London games manufacturer, Jaques and Son of Hatton Gardens, to publish the sets, which featured wooden winks cups hand-turned on a lathe by the company’s craftsmen. An early advertisement for the ‘splendid new game’ called Tiddledy Winks appeared in The Evening Standard on March 1, 1889, with sets available for one shilling. 

With Fincher’s patent accepted on October 19, 1889, and the trademark approved on March 6, 1890, Tiddledy Winks quickly became an established parlour game. It livened up many an evening, judging from an entry in the 17-year-old Lady Emily Lutyens’ diary for April 24, 1892: ‘After dinner we all played the most exciting game that ever was invented, called Tiddleywinks…to begin with, everyone begins to scream at the top of their voices and to accuse everyone else of cheating. Even I forgot my shyness and howled with excitement… I assure you no words can picture either the intense excitement or the noise. I almost scream in describing it.’

National Singles Champion Patrick Barrie takes aim at the National Pairs Championships at Cambridge University in 2015. Credit: Julian Eales via Alamy

Commercial and societal success came with perils. First there were counterfeiters; Jaques and Son had to resort to affixing a notice on the inside of the box warning of cheap imitations. Then there were competitors, with a surge in games launched on to the market that were based on counters and flippers. 

One such was Flitterkins devised by Harold Wilson and Alice Margary and also published by Jaques and Sons, described as ‘A Modification of Lawn Tennis Forming and Indoor Game’, played with a counter rather than a ball. It was granted a patent (GB 1888/18789A) on March 16, 1889, seven months before Fincher received his, making it the first tiddlywinks-based patent to be issued in the world. However, Fincher’s provisional submission was made a month and a half before the Flitterkins submission.

Another variant was Spoof, produced by F H Ayres of 111, Aldergate Street in London, copyrighted on November 6, 1888 and first published six days earlier, a week before Fincher’s initial provisional submission. Described as ‘a new and interesting game’, players had six counters (Men) of the same colour which they tried to flip with a larger counter (the Spoof) into a Spoof cup. Each player would take it in turns to shoot all their men, the winner being the player who shot the most in an agreed time into the cup. Sporting variants such as Spoof Golf, Cricket, Tennis, Croquet, and Quoits were marketed until the turn of the century.

The third patent granted in England for a tiddlywinks-style game was for George Scott’s Golfette or Table Golf, awarded on March 22, 1890, shortly after Fincher’s. It consisted of a course made from felt or other elastic material, a series of hazards to be placed across the course and some ‘springers’ or clubs used to propel counters around the field of play. The object, as in golf, was to sink the counter in the hole in the fewest shots. Scott also secured the first US patent for a tiddlywinks game.

Another notable games manufacturer, J W Spear & Sons, published variations around the tiddlywinks theme including Sweet Wedding Bells, where winks were shot to ring a bell in a bell tower, North Pole, where players fired their counters on to a map with the aim of getting to the pole, and Over the Garden Wall, where counters were propelled over a wall with players scoring a point if they landed on the grass, two in the flower beds, three on the path, and five in the pond. Chronowinks added some jeopardy in 1891, with each game limited to the time it took all of the sand to drop from the top of an hourglass.

From tiddledywinks and then tidley winks, the spelling soon settled down as tiddlywinks. Perhaps there was an initial reluctance to use tiddlywinks as it was a slang term for an unlicensed public house selling beer and hard cider, a ‘wayside mart’, observed Bailey’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes in October 1863, ‘where poachers congregated and flash men came to make inquiries about the architectural contrivances of the neighbouring mansions’.

On the B4039 near the village of Yatton Keynell, about three miles northwest of Chippenham lies the hamlet of Tiddlywink, so called, apparently, because beer was sold from one of its cottages to passing cattle drovers. Having had their bid for recognition ‘squopped’ by the Bartholomew Gazeteer of Places in Britain and its successor, Collins British Atlas and Gazeteer, the residents finally ‘squidged’ their wink when they were granted permission to erect two road signs in February 2003.

There is more to tiddlywinks than meets the eye.   

Martin Fone is the author of ‘Fifty Curious Questions: Pabulum for the Enquiring Mind’

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