Tiddlywinks is a dexterity tabletop game played on a flat felt mat, in which players use a larger disc called a squidger to flick smaller discs called winks so that they leap into the air and land inside a central pot. The game traces to Victorian England, where Joseph Assheton Fincher filed the original patent in 1888. A more rigorous competitive form, with standardized equipment and expanded rules, developed at Cambridge University in 1955 and remains the basis for modern tournament play. Matches are usually contested by two or four players, sometimes three, and typically run thirty minutes to an hour. Beyond potting winks for points, players can squop an opponent's wink by landing their own wink on top of it, immobilizing the covered piece until it is freed, which gives the game a defensive, tactical layer alongside its physical skill demands.
Facts
Sport
Game Type (category) Classification
Player CountSmall Group (3-6 Players) 1 Connections
Sources
1. Tiddlywinks (Wikipedia)
Lead, description of squidger/wink mechanics
Tiddlywinks is a 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.
Lead, player count
Players typically number two or four (sometimes three; six for triples matches).
Lead, patent history
the original patent filed in 1888 by Joseph Assheton Fincher
View the SourceReader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.