Wikipedia

Mornington Crescent (game)

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by McGeddon (talk | contribs) at 09:50, 12 May 2007 (→Actual games). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Mornington Crescent is a game created by Geoffrey Perkins[1] and popularised by the BBC Radio 4 programme I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (ISIHAC). Named after the Mornington Crescent tube station, players make moves by announcing the names of stations on the London Underground, the winner being the first to announce "Mornington Crescent".

The Mornington Crescent tube station, the game's namesake
Spoiler warning: Those unfamiliar with the game may prefer not to read the following explanations.

The game is intended as a parody of complicated strategy games, and particularly satirises the complex rules and terminology that evolve around games such as contract bridge or chess.

Gameplay

Players take turns making a "play" or "move", each of which consists of the name of a station on the London Underground, while a chairman (on ISIHAC, Humphrey Lyttelton) officiates. The first player to announce "Mornington Crescent" wins.

Over time the selection of destinations has strayed well beyond the stations of the London Underground, generally for comic effect. There have also been local variants such as the Slough version and Scottish variants during the Edinburgh Fringe (the show is often recorded on ___location). In one game, recorded in Luton, the moves ranged as far afield as the Place de l'Etoile, Nevsky Prospekt and Pennsylvania Avenue. A move to Luton High Street was ruled invalid, as being too geographically remote. There is also a variation based on road names on the Isle of Thanet named Wellington Crescent.

Due to the show's cult status it is also played by fans on Usenet and in web forums, and this has increased the mythology surrounding the rules.

Rules

Those who write in to the show asking for the rules (as apparently around 200 people a year do) are usually referred to "NF Stovold’s Mornington Crescent: Rules and Origins" and told it is out of print. They are also advised that "your local bookshop might have a copy of The Little Book of Mornington Crescent by Tim, Graeme, Barry and Humph."

This perpetuates the main joke behind Mornington Crescent: that there are actually no rules nor 'game' at all — the game as such is played purely for entertainment value gained by watching others' reactions. The covert objective is to give the appearance of a game of great skill and strategy, with detailed and almost absurdly complex and long-winded rules and strategies, in parody of games and sports in which similarly circuitous systems have evolved. This is an open secret, and few if any of the audience are under any illusion otherwise, but it is possible for people to become involved in the game without realising this, and thus to attempt to play the game seriously. In this way, it bears some resemblance to the party games Take a plane, Scissors, and Mao, in which certain players know "secret" rules. Unlike these games, which actually do have specific but secret rules that new players are expected to figure out, the spirit of Mornington Crescent is to maintain the fiction that the rules are well-defined but numerous, and that gameplay is not arbitrary at all.

As Humphrey Lyttelton says: "[the rulebook is maintained with] inimitable accuracy by the lovely Samantha, who sleeps with it under her pillow. As it now runs to 17 volumes, she is running out of pillows." (Samantha, the beautiful scorer for ISIHAC, is equally fictitious, as is her occasional deputy and male counterpart, Sven.)

The following selection of strategy tips by Graeme Garden gives a good indication of the kinds of "rules" which are propounded:

  • Boxing out the F, J, O and W placings draws the partner into an elliptical progression north to south
  • In weak positional play, it is vital to consolidate an already strong outer square, e.g., Pentonville Road
  • In a straight rules game, it's inadmissible to transfer inversely, which is otherwise a powerful tactic
  • Opening the triangle will block any of the three possible reverse draws and is usually played early in the game (before the Central Line has been quartered) so that the risk of a diagonal move is negligible, as is the possibility of quartering
  • The lateral shift decisively breaks opponents' horizontal and vertical approaches.
  • The A40 northbound used as a counter-play offers rear access to suburban bidding

There is some evidence to suggest that in the early days there were a few simple rules which the panellists knew and the audience did not. The fact that the audience did not know the rules was an in-joke for the panel. Since no one would be able to tell the difference, these rules were only loosely followed, and were eventually abandoned altogether. Given that all those intimately connected with the game naturally dissemble about its nature, it is quite hard to pin down what they were, but they may have been based on a 1952 A–Z of London, plus a few basic rules about which pages you could (or could not) turn to from the page you were on. The point of the game was to prevent the opponent turning to the page with Mornington Crescent on it in their next move. [2]

Recurrent themes

As the game has evolved, a number of common themes within the imaginary rules have arisen, and these are referred to in asides by the players:

  • In general, a move to Mornington Crescent is not allowed very early in the game – the implication being that it takes some time or accumulation of points to reach. Tim Brooke-Taylor once started a game with "Mornington Crescent" and this was severely frowned upon as a breach of the general code of conduct of the game (the audience, however, found the whole thing hilarious and Tim was declared victorious after Humphrey referred to the "audience clap-o-meter"). An immediate victory did occur once on air in ISIHAC, but only after the player claiming it had spent four minutes explaining the particular "rules" he was invoking, therefore making the move acceptable, but the loophole was quickly removed.
  • Varied rule sets such as "Finsbury rules" are invoked, generally being the subject for further asides in the game.
  • Certain moves will be applauded by the audience, or greeted with intakes of breath. Audience reaction can also help shape the game. In one broadcast, a lone clapper applauded Willie Rushton, which resulted in Rushton being "huffed" by Graeme Garden.
  • There are set and established plays, similar to openings in chess, occasionally named after players of the game on ISIHAC, such as "Rushton's Gambit". Knightsbridge to Ongar is said to be a favourite move.
  • Once a player has named Dollis Hill, other players will often groan in anguish in anticipation of the forthcoming "Dollis Hill loop"; thereafter every alternate move will be Dollis Hill until the loop is "escaped" somehow.
  • Players may be "in Spoon", which limits their actions in unspecified ways. During a game broadcast in 1995, the Chairman explained that this was a corruption of the original term, "in Spain". How this might occur, what effect it has or, indeed, as the chairman mused, what a player might be doing in Spain, however, remained unrevealed.
  • There is a similar state called "Knip", or "Knid".
  • A move to Mornington Crescent may be predicted some number of moves in advance, as in chess: "Mornington Crescent in two."
  • Aldwych is always a dangerous move.
  • Real-life changes to the London tube network are sometimes alluded to in the game, most notably when the actual tube station at Mornington Crescent was closed when the lifts failed and a "rules committee" was said to have rushed through an amendment required for the game to stay playable. (The situation came to light only when Graeme Garden's triumphant winning move was declared invalid.) The ISIHAC team launched a spoof charity, the "Mornington Crescent Elevator Repair Fund".

In play by fans these rules and variations are routinely extended and embellished.

Culture of secrecy

Part of the fun (and most of the point) is pretending the rules are real (i.e. set in stone). Allusions are made to an elusive rulebook, and to Stovold, and the supreme obscurity of the rules is a principal source of humour. Players may make reference to the International Mornington Crescent Society (IMCS), allegedly the dominant rule-making body for the game.

Among Mornington Crescent fans it is very bad form to admit that the rules are fictitious. This is because while it may be true that the game rules are fictitious, Mornington Crescent - like any complex social activity - inevitably accumulates social rules, which are not fictitious, although they may well vary from one clique to another. To take the most simplistic case, a player who persistently 'wins' with his or her first move will very soon either lose interest in the game, or cease to be welcome among those who play 'properly'. One of the charming paradoxes of Mornington Crescent is that it is actually playable as a game despite its lack of 'real' rules - but only provided one cooperates with the game's central conceit.

Publications

In the 1990s, Radio 4 broadcast a Christmas special: Mornington Crescent Explained, a "two-part documentary" on Mornington Crescent, with part one being a history of the game through the ages and part two being the rules. At the end of the broadcast of part one it was announced that part two had been postponed due to "scheduling difficulties".

Part two was broadcast on Christmas Eve 2005. It was named "In Search of Mornington Crescent" and narrated by Andrew Marr. [3]

Two books of 'rules' and history have been published, The Little Book of Mornington Crescent (2001; ISBN 0-7528-1864-3) by Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer and Humphrey Lyttelton, and Stovold's Mornington Crescent Almanac (2001; ISBN 0-7528-4815-1) by Graeme Garden.

In the late 1980s, Roger Heyworth, a director of Gibson's Games, mooted the idea of publishing a Mornington Crescent game consisting of an empty box containing a flyer promoting a club for aficionados. The plan was abandoned because of the number of customer complaints that it was expected to generate. In the late 1990s, he approached the BBC with a card game design but this was rejected because it was too serious for a spinoff from a comedy game. [citation needed]

Starting in 1997 an attempt was made to create an actual serious playable version of Mornington Crescent, by means of a nomic. This was inspired by the propensity of nomics to create subgames and the observation that nomic players keep tweaking their nomics to keep them interesting to play. Mornington Nomic was a successful nomic for a while, and indeed succeeded in producing an interesting and playable game that matched the form of Mornington Crescent. While the nomic wound down in 2001, the resulting set of rules for Mornington Crescent remains.

Variants

In general, when Humphrey Lyttelton (Humph) announces a game of Mornington Crescent during an ISIHAC broadcast, he will usually describe a set of special rules that are deemed to apply to that session of the game. For example, 'Trumpington's Variations', or 'Tudor Court Rules'. This means that almost every episode of ISIHAC in which Mornington Crescent is played introduces a new variant. Several ISIHAC fan sites on the web have taken it upon themselves to document these variants as they are described. (See links section.)

In similar vein, among groups that play Mornington Crescent (such as the BBC and Parslow.com web site in the links section) the same tendency to invent and describe new rules variants is also seen.

Finally, it is possible to play Mornington Crescent on any tube, rail, bus, etc. map the players may have available, or even a sufficiently varied arbitrary list of items. (For example, 'Organ Pipe Crescent' or 'Pub Name Crescent'.) All that is required is sufficient copies of the map or list, and an agreement as to which entry on the map corresponds to Mornington Crescent and thus triggers a win.

Some example game variants:

Cultural references

  • Science fiction writer Michael Moorcock included a reference to the game in a comic book which he scripted, entitled Michael Moorcock's Multiverse.
  • Item #101 of the 2005 University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt was for one player on each team to "participate in an email adaptation of the classic game Mornington Crescent", using the CTA rail system. Participants were warned, "We shall follow the standard Thurgood-Hamilton conversion algorithm, but banning semi-lateral shunts." [9]
  • After the death of Willie Rushton, one of ISIHAC's long-time participants, in 1996, his life was commemorated by a blue plaque in the ticket office of Mornington Crescent Tube Station in 2002. ("Willie Rushton: Satirist")
  • In the alternate reality game Perplex City, card #140 in the blue hex set is entitled "Mornington Crescent". The puzzle is to determine the proper play based on stations in Perplex City. The card does not explain the rules, claiming that it would insult the player's intelligence.
  • "The Steep Approach to Garbadale" by Iain Banks mentions the game as a creation of fictional company Wopuld Ltd., described as "a game based on the map of the London underground with a complicated double-level board".
  • In Faction Paradox's Eleven-Day Empire, important relics are stored in the Stacks, a labyrinth constructed from ghosts of London Underground stations. The stations "can only be approached by following a complex sequence of ritual moves"; Mornington Crescent is particularly difficult to reach.

Similar games

Actual games

  • Mao: A card game with rules similar to Mornington Crescent in that the new player must try to learn the rules by observations and it is taboo to spell out the rules. Unlike Mornington Crescent, the rules of Mao are very rigid, though they change from round to round, and from group to group as well.
  • "One Up, One Down": a drinking game with Crescent-like elements.
  • Progress Quest: A satire of MMORPGs, Progress Quest is discussed as a deep and involving game despite being a program with no interactivity. Forum discussions will include gameplay tips, strategies, and hints, or give favorable reviews and boast of in-game accomplishments, while those who question the program as not being a real game are derided. Hidden features, including a fully 3D version, are also mentioned.
  • Rock, Paper, Scissors: The World Rock, Paper, Scissors (RPS) Society maintains a website with elaborate strategy guides for the game, descriptions of tournaments, the RPS Strategy Guide, and the like.
  • Tig Tag: A commentary on the extended version of The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring includes Elijah Wood, Billy Boyd, and Dominic Monaghan talking about an imaginary game called "tig tag". Apparently, Boyd and Monaghan were messing around, saying "tig" and "tag" randomly, when Wood walked up and asked them what they were doing - whereupon they quickly invented a whole set of fake rules, like "No! you can't put a double tag before a tig!" It seems Wood thought the game was genuine, and a few years later asked the others why they didn't play it anymore.
  • Skuk: A fictitious real-life version of Chess, where everything you do is considered a move. "Skuk" is a garbling of the Danish word for check, "skak", and only when your move places your opponent in check are you required to announce it, often by nature of a postcard or phone message only including the word "skuk". "Check mate" becomes "skuk mut", again from the Danish "skak mat". [citation needed]
  • Stanley Random Chess: A chess variant, played with a computer referee which randomly "corrects" at least 50% of each players' moves by replacing it with a "legal" move from its extensive rule database. Despite numerous references to books and "official" tournaments, none of these rules actually exist, and the players explain their moves by making up rules on the spot (often using references to fictional similar situations during equally fictional tournaments). [10]
  • Goobos: a parody of clapping games where different members have to find out the rules. This game includes a complicated backstory, one in which the main theme is that once you have your back to the woods you cannot turn round, for if you do you show that you are a coward. It is played by each member saying a word and 'passing' to another player by making eye contact, and then they saying a word. If it is not 'correct' everyone playing takes their left foot in their right hand and exclaims this fact. [citation needed]
  • Provost: A card game played by students of The Queen's College, Oxford, has complicated rules which change the order in which cards may be played, and has several variations. [citation needed]

Games in works of fiction

  • Calvinball: Calvin and Hobbes' Calvinball bears some resemblance to Mornington Crescent.
  • Clique: The online satirical gaming magazine Critical Miss featured rules for a card game called Clique, a parody of collectible card games that used printed cards and spurious spoken rules to confuse onlookers.
  • Double Cranko, Triple Cranko: The episode of M*A*S*H "Your Hit Parade" (1978) featured Hawkeye Pierce and B. J. Hunnicutt playing an incomprehensible game called "Cranko", and alluded to the presumably more complex "Triple Cranko".
  • Creebage: In one episode of the television series The Monkees, the character of Micky Dolenz (played by the actor of the same name) invents a card game known as Creebage on the fly, also, as in the Star Trek episode, to distract an old-style gangster holding him captive. This game also has incomprehensible rules. While the gangster is distracted, Micky escapes, with the gangster holding up some cards and shouting, "But, I have a creebage!"
  • Cripple Mr Onion: This game is referred to in various books in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. It is a card game whose rules are never directly specified, but are very complex.
  • Cry Bastion: A game improvised by Dave Garver (Clint Eastwood) and Murphy (Donald Siegel) in the film Play Misty For Me
  • Cups: An episode of Friends featured a card game called Cups, which one character (Chandler) had devised as a method of giving money to another character (Joey) without Joey realizing it. Thus, Chandler made up rules on the fly so that he would always lose. (Unfortunately, Joey then played the game with another character, and lost all the money he had won.)
  • Double Fanucci: The computer game Zork Zero features a game called Double Fanucci which has similarly mind-bogglingly complex (and similarly ultimately irrelevant) "rules", with the actual way to "win" the game having nothing at all to do with score or supposed game position. It is unknown whether or not Double Fanucci was inspired by Mornington Crescent.
  • Fizzbin: In the Star Trek episode "A Piece of the Action" (broadcast in 1968), Captain Kirk spontaneously invents a card game called fizzbin after being captured, in order to distract the henchmen guarding him. Fizzbin supposedly has extremely complex and confusing rules, similar to Mornington Crescent.
  • The Glass Bead Game: Hermann Hesse's eponymous novel includes this game, which bears some resemblance to Mornington Crescent, although the spoken game moves in the book are supposed to be genuinely deep and meaningful.
  • Go Johnny Go Go Go Go: The British sitcom The League of Gentlemen features a card game indirectly inspired by Mornington Crescent called Go Johnny Go Go Go Go which has rules which appear to be entirely fictional (or deliberately overcomplex and obfuscated) for the purposes of defrauding naive players.
  • Guyball: A sport played in the British sitcom Green Wing, Guyball is, like Mornington Crescent, a very complex game with no set rules but with some recurring themes, and is based on sports played in British public schools such as the Eton Wall Game. In the game, each player wears a "Topmiler", a basket on top of a helmet, while other players attempt to throw balls into it.
  • House Rules Parcheesi: in DC Simpson's online comic Ozy and Millie, characters play "House Rules Parcheesi", the specifics of which are left to the reader's imagination, but which always ends with the house strewn with tennis rackets, socks, couch cushions stacked in complicated positions, etc.
  • How I Met Your Mother: In the episode "Atlantic City", Barney plays a game entirely in chinese called Shing Hai Si Bu Shing. Marshall, however, figures out how to play the game, giving Barney clues as to how to play. Barney wins by going all in, spinning a roulette wheel, and choosing the girl who is holding the Jelly Bean. He shows this victory by declaring "Ning Na".
  • "I Ruff, I Huff": The Tom Stoppard play The Real Inspector Hound has several scenes where people in a seaside mansion are playing a card game that has commentaries such as "I Ruff" and "I Huff", and follows no obvious known card game's rules. The objective seems to be that the 'odd person out' in the scene loses.
  • Numberwang: A sketch, created for the radio series That Mitchell and Webb Sound, and later appearing as a series of sketches on the television version, That Mitchell and Webb Look. Numberwang is a fictional maths-based game show that "Makes very little sense". Each contestant shouts out numbers until someone reaches "Numberwang".
  • Sink: A game generally played by Discordians (and people of much ilk). The rules are defined in the Principia Discordia. [11]
  • Spat: One episode of Garden and Brooke-Taylor's television series, The Goodies (also starring Bill Oddie) featured a card game called "Spat", which bore many similarities to Mornington Crescent. In it a hapless Bill was being taught Spat by Graeme and Tim but kept on accidentally breaking the increasingly surreal rules.
  • TEGWAR: The book Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris includes a game called TEGWAR, The Exciting Game Without Any Rules. Played by professional baseball players as a way to dupe unsuspecting fans out of their money, the game features rules that are made up on the spot. Each time a non-inititate thinks he's understood how to play, he's told of a new wrinkle in the rules that he somehow didn't catch. (The game also appears in the 1973 film of the same name.)

References

  1. ^ The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts, Pan Publishing. ISBN 0330419574
  2. ^ "Mornington Crescent Rules". Retrieved 2006-11-12.
  3. ^ "BBC - Radio 4 - Comedy and Quizzes - In Search of Mornington Crescent". Retrieved 2006-11-12.
  4. ^ Archived Stora Mossen game transcript, in Swedish
  5. ^ Archived Stora Mossen game transcript, in English
  6. ^ Archived Chateau d'Eau game transcript
  7. ^ Description of Chateau d'Eau ruleset
  8. ^ Description of 'Mornington Croissant'
  9. ^ "[[University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt]] 2005 list" (PDF). {{cite web}}: Text "pdf" ignored (help); URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  10. ^ "Stanley Random Chess". Retrieved 2007-02-08.
  11. ^ "Sink (Principia Discordia)". Retrieved 2007-02-11.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mornington_Crescent_(game)&oldid=130295365"