Mornington Crescent (game)

The Mornington Crescent tube station, the game's namesake

Mornington Crescent is a game created by Geoffrey Perkins 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 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.

The Mornington Crescent tube station is on London's Northern Line between Euston and Camden Town on the Charing Cross Branch. However, if you travel between the same two stations on the City Branch, the station simply isn't there. Now you see it, now you don't. The name is an allusion to the mystery of the game.

Gameplay

Players take turns making a "play" or "move", each of which consists of the name of a "node", which may be a station on the London Underground or (more typical in the modern game) a wider geographical nodespace, while a chairman (on ISIHAC, Humphrey Lyttelton) officiates. The first player to announce the target node (in all but the most radical departures: "Mornington Crescent") wins.

Over time the selection of nodes has strayed well beyond the stations of the London Underground (where the game originated), generally for tactical and stategic 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.

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. However, the presence of this mythology should not deter keen players from playing the game according to the classical structure or one of its modern variations that have been accepted as valid by the Mornington Crescent community. There really is no reason to depart from the accepted norms, and those who insist on doing so should find another name for their game (and probably another target node).

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 advice cannot be bettered.

Some say of Mornington Crescent that there are actually no fixed rules at all — the game is played purely for entertainment. This is, of course, just an expression of frustration due to ignorance. The objective, at least on the radio, is instead to make best use of the complex rules and strategies, in as with in other 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 without having first appraised themselves of all the rules and conventions that accompany the game. Such people will appear foolish. Those who approach the game with an open mind, willing to accept its historical practices, will find it extremely fulfilling. In this way, it bears little 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 standards that have been developed over generations. This is in contrast to many other games that present a fiction that their 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 as equally fictitious as the assertion that "You and Yours" has the merest vestige of interest to any sentient life-form, 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

Original rules?

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, and the modern strict rules took over. 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. Of course, we have now moved on, and the casual nature of play in the early days is not now be acceptable in the modern professional game. However, there are many amateurs still playing by these early slack playing conventions, that are not really 'rules' by the standards of today.

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:

• 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".
• 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.
• Certain moves will be applauded by the audience, or greeted with intakes of breath. Audience reaction can also help shape the game. A lone clapper applauded Willie Rushton at the Derngate Theatre, Northampton, which resulted in Rushton being "huffed" by Graeme Garden.
• A move to Mornington Crescent may be predicted some number of moves in advance, as with "mate in 2" in Chess: "Mornington Crescent in 2".
• Aldwych is a dangerous move, always.
• 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".
• Varied rule sets such as "Finsbury rules" are invoked, generally being the subject for further asides in the game ("No, the secondary oblique is blocked on the lower diagonal...").
• 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 must be Dollis Hill until the loop is "escaped" somehow. The best way to conquer this is, of course, to establish a second loop of a similar magnitude and thus cancel out the Dollis Hill loop. Of course, this is impossible if trapped in Spoon.
• 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. 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.

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

• It is rare that a Mrs Trellis of North Wales does not have a comment that is entirely irrelevant to the start of any professional game of Mornington Crescent. However, it is likely that amateurs will not be able to benefit from this, unless they are very competent in playing the game, and can make an allowable call on the relevant governing bodies. Such a call may be considered to have more weight if the amateur game is in Liff or in Spoon and especially if there is an open diagonal. (A reference is needed for this assertion.)

Culture of secrecy

Detractors of the game suggest that part of the fun (and most of the point) is pretending the rules can be varied at will. Of course, this is not so, and all experienced players know just how strict are the rules and that the sanctions for breaking them are real. Allusions are made to the rulebook having an elusive nature; this is, of course, nonsense. The status of the rulebook is clear and unambiguous; 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 almost taboo to admit that the rules are fictitious.

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.

Two books of 'rules' and history have been published, The Little Book of Mornington Crescent (2001; ISBN 0-7528-4422-9) by Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer and Humphrey Lyttelton, and Stovold's Mornington Crescent Almanac (2001; ISBN 0-7528-4729-5) 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.

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 Sheffield the game uses the Sheffield Supertram and Malin Bridge as the target.
• In Sweden the game is sometimes played by science fiction fans and uses the Stockholm Metro map and Stora Mossen as the target.
• In Québec the game uses the Montréal Métro map and Lucien-L'Allier as the target.
• The Paris Métro game uses Château d'Eau station as the target.
• Some episodes of ISIHAC recorded at the Edinburgh Fringe feature a local variation — called Morningside Crescent, after a residential neighbourhood of Edinburgh.
• In the 1980s, postal gaming hobbyists invented a variant of Mornington Crescent for postal play, called Finchley Central. This is also the name of a very similar game described by the mathematician John Horton Conway in his book On Numbers and Games in 1976.
• Wikington Crescent is a version played on Wikipedia. Players start with a 'Random Article' and must navigate to the Mornington Crescent tube station article by clicking through links on the random article and subsequent articles. The fewer links used, the better the play. For example: Matterhorn to Mornington Crescent tube station can be played in four links.

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.
• In 1995, the British indie band My Life Story released an album called Mornington Crescent. This was partly a reference to the station (which at the time was closed for repairs, prompting widespread rumours that it would not be re-opening) and partly to the game, whose esoteric, "in-joke" nature seemed to fit well with the group's unusual orchestral sound.
• 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." [1]
• 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 Nuthall area of Nottingham, UK, a modern housing estate is planned around a main street called Mornington Crescent. Nearly all the side roads are named after tube stations (Arnos Grove, Colindale Gardens for example).
• In the sci-fi book "The Atrocity Archives" by Charles Stross, the secret main entrance to the extremely secret Government establishment (the Laundry) the protagonist works for is situated in the Gents toilets of Mornington Crescent Tube Station.
• In the books of Robert Rankin, the fictional Ministry Of Serendipity is based in Mornington Crescent.
• In their 2006 album The Life Pursuit, Scottish Popsters Belle and Sebastian included a song called Mornington Crescent, ostensibly about the Tube Station of the same name.
• 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.

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.
• 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, and a losing player may under certain conditions be required to buy ice cream for the other players from Summertown while wearing sub fusc.
• 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".

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 collectable card games that used printed cards and spurious spoken rules to confuse onlookers.
• Double Cranko, Triple Cranko: An episode of M*A*S*H 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 Mickey 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, Mickey 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.
• 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.
• "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.
• 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.)

External links

• A list of variations mentioned in ISIHAC games
• Mornington Crescent Simplified and Explained for Novices
• Automated version of the game, against the server, following the short rules and rule 7b.
• Forum-style multi-player Mornington Crescent and other ISIHAC games
• Encyclopaedia Morningtonia (wiki)