Tiddlywinks
Encyclopedia
Tiddlywinks is an indoor game
played on a flat mat with sets of small discs called "winks", a pot and a collection of squidgers. Players use a "squidger", a disk usually made from plastic to move a wink into flight by pressing down on one side of the wink. The objective of the game is to score points by sending your own winks into the pot and preventing the opponent from "squapping" your winks by placing their own winks on top of them. As part of strategic gameplay players often attempt to squap their opponents winks and develop, maintain and break large piles of winks
To many, tiddlywinks is considered to be a simpleminded, frivolous children's game, rather than an adult game. 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. The rest of this article concerns the adult game.
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 top-level play involves sophisticated 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.
(ETwA) and the North American Tiddlywinks Association (NATwA) (the Scottish Tiddlywinks Association disbanded in the late 1990s). These organisations are responsible for the running of tournaments and maintaining the rules of the game (which actually differ only slightly between the two organisations; the NATwA rules are based on the ETwA rules). International competition is overseen by the International Federation of Tiddlywinks Associations (IFTwA), though in practice it is rarely called upon to intervene.
There are several other less prestigious tournaments in England and the USA throughout the year, often with a format designed to encourage inexperienced players. The results of tournaments and World Championship matches are used to calculate Tiddlywinks Ratings, which give a ranking of players. Typically there are about 120 players in the Ratings system.
All in all, tiddlywinks goes beyond the purely cerebral nature of a game such as chess. The fact that shots can be made or missed, together with the continuum of possible outcomes, makes strategy much less rigid than in chess, and prevents planning more than seven or eight shots in advance.
to specified measurements, and are made by slicing an extruded
cylinder rather than by moulding
, and then smoothing them in a tumbler. Although this leads to some minor variation in thickness, it produces a much smoother edge to the wink than seen on cheap moulded winks.
The mats are made of thick felt
. Mats obtained from different suppliers have different characteristics, and part of the skill of a tournament player is to adjust to different mats.
Squidgers are custom-made by their owners. A player may use as many as he likes, selecting an appropriate squidger for each shot. Top players will carry anything up to twenty different squidgers, but will not typically use all of them in one game. The rules governing squidgers are liberal; a range of dimensions are permitted, and the material is not specified, except for the condition that squidgers must not damage winks. Typically squidgers are made from different types of plastic
, though glass
, rubber
, cork
and onyx
are often seen. The squidgers are usually filed or sanded to give a sharp edge and then polished.
Blitz: an attempt to pot all six winks of a player's colour early in the game
Bomb: to send a wink at a pile, usually from distance, in the hope of significantly disturbing it
Boondock: to free a squopped wink by sending it a long way away, leaving the squopping wink free in the battle area
Bristol: a shot which moves a pile of two or more winks as a single unit; the shot is played by holding the squidger at a right angle to its normal plane
Carnovsky (US)/Penhaligon (UK): potting a wink from the baseline (i.e., from 3 feet away)
Cracker: a simultaneous knock-off and squop, i.e. a shot which knocks one wink off the top of another while simultaneously squopping it
Crud: a forceful shot whose purpose is to destroy a pile completely
Good shot: named after John Good. The shot consists of playing a flat wink (one not involved in a pile) through a nearby pile with the intent of destroying the pile
Gromp: an attempt to jump a pile onto another wink (usually with the squidger held in a conventional rather than Bristol fashion)
John Lennon
memorial shot: a simultaneous boondock and squop
Lunch: to pot a squopped wink (usually belonging to an opponent)
Scrunge (UK): to bounce out of the pot
Squidger: the disc used to shoot a wink
Squop: to play a wink so that it comes to rest above another wink
Sub: to play a wink so that it ends up (unintentionally) under another wink
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.
Game
A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...
played on a flat mat with sets of small discs called "winks", a pot and a collection of squidgers. Players use a "squidger", a disk usually made from plastic to move a wink into flight by pressing down on one side of the wink. The objective of the game is to score points by sending your own winks into the pot and preventing the opponent from "squapping" your winks by placing their own winks on top of them. As part of strategic gameplay players often attempt to squap their opponents winks and develop, maintain and break large piles of winks
To many, tiddlywinks is considered to be a simpleminded, frivolous children's game, rather than an adult game. The modern competitive adult game of tiddlywinks made a strong comeback at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
in 1955. The modern game uses far more complex rules and a consistent set of high-grade equipment. The rest of this article concerns the adult game.
Overview of the rules
Tiddlywinks is a game for four players, playing in partnerships, though it is often played between two opponents, each playing the role of two partners. Each player controls the winks of one 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 usually placed on a table, and a pot is placed at its centre.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
Pocket billiards
Pool, also more formally known as pocket billiards or pool billiards , is the family of cue sports and games played on a pool table having six receptacles called pockets along the , into which balls are deposited as the main goal of play. Popular versions include eight-ball and nine-ball...
or snooker
Snooker
Snooker is a cue sport that is played on a green baize-covered table with pockets in each of the four corners and in the middle of each of the long side cushions. A regular table is . It is played using a cue and snooker balls: one white , 15 worth one point each, and six balls of different :...
, 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 top-level play involves sophisticated 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.
National and international organisations
There are two national associations, the English Tiddlywinks AssociationEnglish Tiddlywinks Association
The English Tiddlywinks Association was founded at a meeting at Christ's College, University of Cambridge on 12 June 1958. Its objectives are to promote the game of tiddlywinks and coordinate winking activities in the United Kingdom....
(ETwA) and the North American Tiddlywinks Association (NATwA) (the Scottish Tiddlywinks Association disbanded in the late 1990s). These organisations are responsible for the running of tournaments and maintaining the rules of the game (which actually differ only slightly between the two organisations; the NATwA rules are based on the ETwA rules). International competition is overseen by the International Federation of Tiddlywinks Associations (IFTwA), though in practice it is rarely called upon to intervene.
Competitive play
Although tiddlywinks nowadays is a singles or pairs game, competition in the 1950s through the 1980s centred on team competition, with teams consisting of several (three or four) pairs. There were several university teams, and international matches were also played. More recently, singles and pairs tournaments have come to be the focus of competitive tiddlywinks, with only a few team matches being played each year. The four most prestigious tournaments are the National Singles and National Pairs tournaments held in England and the USA. The World Singles and World Pairs championships operate on a challenge basis; anyone winning a national tournament (or being the highest-placed home player behind a foreign winner) is entitled to challenge the current champion.There are several other less prestigious tournaments in England and the USA throughout the year, often with a format designed to encourage inexperienced players. The results of tournaments and World Championship matches are used to calculate Tiddlywinks Ratings, which give a ranking of players. Typically there are about 120 players in the Ratings system.
Skill versus strategy, and comparable games
The important appeal of the game for many players is the required combination of manual dexterity and strategic thought. Tiddlywinkers often claim that the game combines physical skill (such as in snooker or golf) with the strategy of chess. What is true is that tiddlywinks is unique in the combination of skill and strategy it requires. Strategy in tiddlywinks is often rather deep, since winks can be captured. Strategic and tactical planning involves anticipating opponents' moves rather than just building a sequence of one's own moves. Another factor that complicates the game is that there is a time limit to the play of the game, rather than until some objective in the game has been met.All in all, tiddlywinks goes beyond the purely cerebral nature of a game such as chess. The fact that shots can be made or missed, together with the continuum of possible outcomes, makes strategy much less rigid than in chess, and prevents planning more than seven or eight shots in advance.
Equipment
The winks and pot used in competitive play are standard, and are supplied by the English Tiddlywinks Association. The pots are made of moulded plastic (historically always red, though there is no known reason for this), with specified diameters at the top and the base, and specified height. The winks are made in ItalyItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
to specified measurements, and are made by slicing an extruded
Extrusion
Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile. A material is pushed or drawn through a die of the desired cross-section...
cylinder rather than by moulding
Molding (process)
Molding or moulding is the process of manufacturing by shaping pliable raw material using a rigid frame or model called a pattern....
, and then smoothing them in a tumbler. Although this leads to some minor variation in thickness, it produces a much smoother edge to the wink than seen on cheap moulded winks.
The mats are made of thick felt
Felt
Felt is a non-woven cloth that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing woollen fibres. While some types of felt are very soft, some are tough enough to form construction materials. Felt can be of any colour, and made into any shape or size....
. Mats obtained from different suppliers have different characteristics, and part of the skill of a tournament player is to adjust to different mats.
Squidgers are custom-made by their owners. A player may use as many as he likes, selecting an appropriate squidger for each shot. Top players will carry anything up to twenty different squidgers, but will not typically use all of them in one game. The rules governing squidgers are liberal; a range of dimensions are permitted, and the material is not specified, except for the condition that squidgers must not damage winks. Typically squidgers are made from different types of plastic
Plastic
A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...
, though glass
Glass
Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...
, rubber
Rubber
Natural rubber, also called India rubber or caoutchouc, is an elastomer that was originally derived from latex, a milky colloid produced by some plants. The plants would be ‘tapped’, that is, an incision made into the bark of the tree and the sticky, milk colored latex sap collected and refined...
, cork
Cork (material)
Cork is an impermeable, buoyant material, a prime-subset of bark tissue that is harvested for commercial use primarily from Quercus suber , which is endemic to southwest Europe and northwest Africa...
and onyx
Onyx
Onyx is a banded variety of chalcedony. The colors of its bands range from white to almost every color . Commonly, specimens of onyx contain bands of black and/or white.-Etymology:...
are often seen. The squidgers are usually filed or sanded to give a sharp edge and then polished.
Tiddlywinks terminology
Many of the shots in the game of tiddlywinks have unusual names, some of which have become dictionary entries. Here is a selection.Blitz: an attempt to pot all six winks of a player's colour early in the game
Bomb: to send a wink at a pile, usually from distance, in the hope of significantly disturbing it
Boondock: to free a squopped wink by sending it a long way away, leaving the squopping wink free in the battle area
Bristol: a shot which moves a pile of two or more winks as a single unit; the shot is played by holding the squidger at a right angle to its normal plane
Carnovsky (US)/Penhaligon (UK): potting a wink from the baseline (i.e., from 3 feet away)
Cracker: a simultaneous knock-off and squop, i.e. a shot which knocks one wink off the top of another while simultaneously squopping it
Crud: a forceful shot whose purpose is to destroy a pile completely
Good shot: named after John Good. The shot consists of playing a flat wink (one not involved in a pile) through a nearby pile with the intent of destroying the pile
Gromp: an attempt to jump a pile onto another wink (usually with the squidger held in a conventional rather than Bristol fashion)
John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
memorial shot: a simultaneous boondock and squop
Lunch: to pot a squopped wink (usually belonging to an opponent)
Scrunge (UK): to bounce out of the pot
Squidger: the disc used to shoot a wink
Squop: to play a wink so that it comes to rest above another wink
Sub: to play a wink so that it ends up (unintentionally) under another wink
History
The game began as an adult parlour game in VictorianVictorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. 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
Jaques of London
Jaques of London, formerly known as John Jaques of London and Jaques and Son of London is a long-established family company that manufactures sports and game equipment...
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
Christ's College, Cambridge
Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.With a reputation for high academic standards, Christ's College averaged top place in the Tompkins Table from 1980-2000 . In 2011, Christ's was placed sixth.-College history:...
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
English Tiddlywinks Association
The English Tiddlywinks Association was founded at a meeting at Christ's College, University of Cambridge on 12 June 1958. Its objectives are to promote the game of tiddlywinks and coordinate winking activities in the United Kingdom....
(ETwA) was founded in 1958. In the same year, an article appeared in The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
entitled "Does Prince Philip cheat at tiddlywinks?" Sensing a good publicity opportunity the Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club (CUTwC) challenged Prince Philip
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the husband of Elizabeth II. He is the United Kingdom's longest-serving consort and the oldest serving spouse of a reigning British monarch....
(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
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
for several weeks under the sponsorship of Guinness
Guinness
Guinness is a popular Irish dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James's Gate, Dublin. Guinness is directly descended from the porter style that originated in London in the early 18th century and is one of the most successful beer brands worldwide, brewed in almost...
. They were undefeated against teams from the New York Giants
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in East Rutherford, New Jersey, representing the New York City metropolitan area. The Giants are currently members of the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...
and various American colleges and newspapers. A very prominent article appeared in Life magazine
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
in October 1962 with coverage of the Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
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
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
) and Canadian (University of Waterloo
University of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo is a comprehensive public university in the city of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The school was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles, and has since grown to an institution of more than 30,000 students, faculty, and staff...
and Waterloo Lutheran University) teams.
In the meantime, in the Fall of 1965, Severin Drix started a team at Cornell
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
, and challenged his friend Ferd Wulkan of MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
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
University of York
The University of York , is an academic institution located in the city of York, England. Established in 1963, the campus university has expanded to more than thirty departments and centres, covering a wide range of subjects...
and in Shrewsbury School
Shrewsbury School
Shrewsbury School is a co-educational independent school for pupils aged 13 to 18, founded by Royal Charter in 1552. The present campus to which the school moved in 1882 is located on the banks of the River Severn in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England...
. 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
Savage Club
The Savage Club, founded in 1857 is a gentlemen's club in London.-History:Many and varied are the stories that have been told about the first meeting of the Savage Club, of the precise purposes for which it was formed, and of its christening...
, with members of the original 1958 CUTwC team in attendance. Cambridge repeated their victory from 1958 by winning the match 24-18.