Mornington Crescent (game)

An enamel sign at the Mornington Crescent station, the game's namesake.

Mornington Crescent is a game created by Geoffrey Perkins and popularised by the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (ISIHAC).

A game consists of each player in turn announcing the name of a London landmark or street, most often a station on the London Underground system; the winner is the first player to announce "Mornington Crescent", a tube station on the Northern Line.

The game, whose further rules are never explained, satirises complicated strategy games, particularly the abstruse jargon involved in such games 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 set of permitted destinations has expanded well beyond the stations of the London Underground. ISIHAC is recorded in many locations around the United Kingdom, and the game is occasionally modified to fit a local map; such cases have included a version in Slough, as well as one in Scotland played during the Edinburgh Fringe arts festival. In one game, recorded in Luton, moves ranged as far afield as the Place de l'Étoile in Paris, Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. However, a move to Luton High Street was ruled invalid for being too geographically remote.

A computerised female voice was introduced in one 2005 edition as the Satnav, and later featured twice in 2007 as a computer-player. The computer gets easily distracted, makes comments such as "Have you never played this game before?" and has developed crushes on both Jeremy Hardy and Stephen Fry.

Lyttelton has sometimes stated that the game predates the London Underground system. For example, the 'Tudor Court Rules' are described as "A version of the game formally adopted by Henry VIII and played by Shakespeare. At this time, the underground was far smaller than at present and so the playing area also was more restricted, primarily due to plague."

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. A facebook application has also been produced.

Rules

Those who write in to the show asking for the rules 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 practice perpetuates the game's central joke: that its rules are never explained. Some sources indicate that the game began with simple but secret rules, possibly based on a 1952 edition of the London A–Z, plus a few basic rules about which pages you could (or could not) turn to from the page you were on – all of which fell rapidly into disuse in favour of whimsical improvisation of rules and terminology. This original version of the game allowed for some degree of basic strategy, its goal being to reach the Mornington Crescent page while preventing opponents doing so first; but this disappeared along with the original rules. Other sources maintain that there are no rules nor any true game at all – that the game is played purely for the purpose of perpetrating a joke on newcomers and those who are not in on the joke. Many sources, however, make general reference to the rules while refusing to enumerate them, instead assuring the reader that he will learn them easily by watching or participating in a game.

The objective of the game as it has come to be played on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue is to give the appearance of a game of great skill and strategy, with 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 party games such as 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 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."

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.

Recurrent themes

As the game has evolved, a number of common themes within the rules, often mentioned in asides by the players, have developed:

• 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, thereby making the move acceptable.
• Variant 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 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 are similar states called "knip", "Nidd", "knid", "prig" and others.
• 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 and set in stone. Allusions are made to elusive rulebooks, 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 claim the rules are fictitious. 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'. A paradox 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 eventually written, and 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 0-7528-1864-3) 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.

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 documented these variants as they are described. In similar vein, among groups that play Mornington Crescent, the same tendency to invent and describe new rules variants is also seen.

It is also possible to play Mornington Crescent on any subway, 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.

Enthusiasts in Sweden use the Stockholm Metro map and Stora Mossen as the target.

The Paris Métro game uses Château d'Eau station as the target.

In Washington, DC the Washington Metro subway system is used, and the Rhode Island Avenue-Brentwood station (on the Red Line) is the equivalent to Mornington Crescent. Farragut West station is the dreaded Dollis Hill equivalent.

In Sheffield the game uses the Sheffield Supertram and Malin Bridge as the target. In this variant, one can deliberately pass on a go by "getting off in Hillsborough".

Cultural references

• 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."
• 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. In fact, naming any station on the Perplex City tube map was acceptable.
• "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".
• Douglas Hofstadter, in his book Metamagical Themas, references a game called Finchley Central, as described by Anatole Beck and David Fowler. The game is identical to Mornington Crescent except for the named underground station. It is unclear as to which version was the original, but Hofstadter tellingly phrases his reference "… the game they call Finchley Central", perhaps indicating he already had heard of the Mornington Crescent version.
• In the novel Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction by Sue Townsend, the protagonist writes to Radio 4 demanding a copy of the rules as he has trouble following the game.

See also

• List of games with concealed rules

External links

• The BBC Radio 4 Mornington Crescent message board
• 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)