The History of Tiddlywinks: A Victorian Craze

Picture a late-Victorian drawing room after dinner. The plates are cleared, the lamps are lit, and a small army of coloured discs is being flicked across the polished table towards a little cup in the middle. The room is full of grown adults, perfectly respectable, entirely absorbed. This is tiddlywinks at the height of its first craze — and it was never really a children's game to begin with.

The game was patented in 1888, swept fashionable Britain in the 1890s, and went on to live two quite separate lives: one as a parlour pastime for adults, another as the genteel, ferociously tactical sport revived at Cambridge in the 1950s. Jaques of London sat at the centre of the first chapter, as one of the principal makers who turned a clever idea into a household name.

Here is the full story — the patent, the craze, the rules, the revival, and why a box of winks still earns its place on the family table today.

The 1888 patent and the Fincher story

Tiddlywinks began not as folk tradition but as an invention with paperwork. In 1888 a London businessman named Joseph Assheton Fincher registered it as a brand-new game with the UK Patent Office (UK Patent Office, 1888). The original spelling was charmingly fussy: "Tiddledy-Winks", a name that captured the slightly silly, flicking spirit of the thing.

Fincher was not a toymaker by trade but an entrepreneur with an eye for the parlour market. Late-Victorian Britain had a near-insatiable appetite for after-dinner games, and a pastime that needed only a flat table, a cup and a handful of small discs was perfectly pitched. It was cheap to make, quick to learn, and surprisingly hard to master.

The patent mattered. By registering the game rather than simply selling it, Fincher created something that could be licensed and manufactured properly — a defined product with a name attached, rather than an anonymous folk amusement. That single decision is why we can date the game so precisely, and why it arrived in the world already commercial.

What he could not patent was how addictive it would prove. Within a few short years the little discs had jumped from a novelty to a national fixation, and the manufacturers who could make a good set quickly — Jaques of London chief among them — found themselves with a genuine phenomenon on their hands.

How Jaques of London turned it into a Victorian parlour craze

Founded in 1795, Jaques of London was already Britain's pre-eminent games maker by the time tiddlywinks appeared. This was the firm that had given the world the Staunton chess set and commercial croquet; it understood, better than almost anyone, how to take a game and turn it into a thing families actually wanted in the house.

Jaques became one of the principal manufacturers that commercialised and popularised tiddlywinks in the late nineteenth century (Jaques brand record). A good set was not a trivial thing to produce. The winks needed to be consistent in weight and spring, the pot the right height and width, the squidgers smooth enough to flick cleanly. Quality of components decided whether the game felt magical or merely fiddly.

The timing was perfect. The 1890s craze was an adult phenomenon first, played for laughs and small wagers in middle-class drawing rooms across the country. Sets sold by the thousand, and the better-made ones earned a reputation that long outlasted the fad. You can trace a straight line from those Victorian boxes to the wooden games we make today, the same care still visible in our traditional games collection.

It is also why the brand and the game are so often mentioned in the same breath. To make tiddlywinks well in the 1890s was to be part of the small group of firms defining what the game even was — and Jaques, with a century of games-making already behind it, was squarely among them. The story of the modern game, told in our piece on the oldest games company in the world, runs straight through that drawing-room boom.

How the game is actually played

The equipment is delightfully simple. You need a flat surface, usually with a little felt mat, a central cup called the pot, a set of small discs called winks, and a larger disc for each player called a squidger. Winks usually come in four colours — blue, green, red and yellow — with roughly six per colour, in two sizes.

To play, you press the edge of your squidger down onto the rim of a wink. The pressure makes the wink jump — that flicking action is called a squidge. The basic aim is to squidge your winks off the mat and into the pot in the centre. Sounds easy. It is not.

The tactical heart of the game is a move called squopping: landing one of your winks so it comes to rest on top of an opponent's wink, trapping it. A squopped wink cannot be played until it is freed, so a clever player spends as much energy pinning rivals as potting their own pieces. This single rule is what turns a flicking novelty into a genuine game of strategy.

A game can be played by up to four people, or as two partnerships of two, with each side trying to pot all its winks first while squopping the opposition into paralysis. It rewards a delicate touch and a ruthless mind in equal measure — which is precisely why the adults of the 1890s could not put it down.

From drawing room to Cambridge: the 1955 revival

After its Victorian and Edwardian heyday, tiddlywinks gradually slipped into being thought of as a children's game — a box pulled out for rainy afternoons rather than a serious adult contest. Then, in 1955, a group of undergraduates at Cambridge University revived it, and everything changed.

Their motive was partly mischief. Looking for a sport at which they could plausibly take on Oxford and win, they seized on tiddlywinks precisely because it was unfashionable, and proceeded to take it with deadpan seriousness. They codified rules, developed tactics, and treated squopping as a discipline worthy of study.

The movement was formal enough that the English Tiddlywinks Association was founded in 1958 to govern the competitive game. What had been a parlour amusement now had national matches, a recognised body, and a vocabulary of strategy as dense as any in sport. The flicking was the same; the seriousness behind it was entirely new.

Modern competitive tiddlywinks still thrives in that tradition, played in singles and pairs with a precision the Victorians would scarcely recognise. It is one of those rare games that is genuinely two things at once: a light family pastime and a deeply tactical sport. Few drawing-room inventions have aged into something so unexpectedly clever.

Why it still belongs on the family table

For all its competitive credentials, tiddlywinks earns its keep at home for the simplest of reasons: it is screen-free fun that genuinely works across generations. A six-year-old and a grandparent can sit at the same table and have an even contest, because a steady hand matters as much as anything else.

It is also forgiving of attention spans. A round is short, the rules fit on a postcard, and there is an immediate, satisfying physical feedback in the squidge of a wink into the pot. That tactile pleasure is exactly what so many screen games lack, and it is why traditional games keep finding their way back onto the kitchen table.

If you want games built to the standard those Victorian originals set, Jaques still makes a range of traditional parlour and table games, each one a tactile, screen-free way to gather a family round the table. Like all our wooden products it is made with FSC-certified timber and non-toxic, water-based paints, and independently tested to UKCA and CE standards — the same care you will find across our board games and our larger garden games range.

It sits neatly alongside the other quick classics worth keeping in the cupboard — the kind of game you can teach in a minute and argue over for an hour, much like the one in our guide to Shut the Box rules, history and the best set. Patented in 1888, perfected on the Jaques table ever since.

Frequently Asked Questions About Tiddlywinks

Who invented tiddlywinks?

Tiddlywinks was invented by Joseph Assheton Fincher, a London businessman, who patented it in 1888 (UK Patent Office). He registered it as a brand-new game under the original spelling "Tiddledy-Winks". Fincher was an entrepreneur rather than a traditional toymaker, and his decision to patent the game meant it could be licensed and manufactured properly. Jaques of London, founded in 1795, was among the principal manufacturers who then commercialised and popularised it, helping turn Fincher's invention into one of the defining parlour games of late-Victorian Britain.

When was tiddlywinks invented?

Tiddlywinks was invented and patented in 1888 by Joseph Assheton Fincher in London (UK Patent Office). It became a hugely popular adult parlour game during the 1890s, swept up in late-Victorian Britain's appetite for after-dinner amusements. Only later was it widely regarded as a children's game. The competitive version we know today is much more recent: it was revived by students at Cambridge University in 1955, and the English Tiddlywinks Association was founded in 1958 to govern the modern sport.

How do you play tiddlywinks?

You play tiddlywinks on a flat surface with a central cup called the pot, small discs called winks, and a larger disc called a squidger for each player. You press the edge of your squidger onto the rim of a wink to make it jump — an action called a squidge — and try to land your winks in the pot. You can also "squop" an opponent by landing a wink on top of theirs to trap it. The first player or partnership to pot all their winks wins.

What is a squidger?

A squidger is the larger disc each player uses to flick their winks. You press its edge down onto the rim of a small wink, and the pressure makes the wink spring up and jump forward. Every player has their own squidger, while the winks are the smaller discs that actually travel into the pot. The quality of a squidger matters: a smooth, well-made one gives a clean, reliable flick, which is part of why well-crafted sets, like those Jaques of London has produced since the 1890s, play so much better than cheap ones.

What does squopping mean?

Squopping is the key tactical move in tiddlywinks. It means landing one of your winks so that it comes to rest on top of an opponent's wink, trapping it underneath. A squopped wink cannot be played until it is freed, so squopping lets you immobilise your rivals while you pot your own pieces. This single rule is what transforms tiddlywinks from a simple flicking game into a contest of genuine strategy, and it is central to the competitive game revived at Cambridge in 1955.

Is tiddlywinks a children's game?

Not originally. Tiddlywinks began as an adult parlour game and was hugely popular among grown-ups in 1890s late-Victorian Britain, played for laughs and small wagers in middle-class drawing rooms. Only later did it come to be seen mainly as a children's game. In truth it works brilliantly for both: it is simple enough for a young child to enjoy, yet the tactical depth of squopping makes the competitive version a serious adult sport, governed in Britain by the English Tiddlywinks Association since 1958.

How many players can play tiddlywinks?

Tiddlywinks can be played by up to four players. It is commonly played either as four individuals, each with their own colour, or as two partnerships of two players. Standard sets usually include four colours — blue, green, red and yellow — with roughly six winks per colour in two sizes. The partnership format is especially popular in the competitive game, where two players work together to pot their winks and squop the opposing pair, adding a layer of teamwork to the tactics.

Is tiddlywinks still played competitively?

Yes. Although it began as a Victorian parlour game, tiddlywinks was revived as a serious competitive sport by students at Cambridge University in 1955. The English Tiddlywinks Association was founded in 1958 to govern the game, and it is still played competitively today in both singles and pairs formats. The modern game is far more tactical than the casual version, built around squopping — trapping opponents' winks — and demands a precise, delicate touch that the original Victorian players would barely recognise.

Why is it called tiddlywinks?

The name comes from the game's original 1888 spelling, "Tiddledy-Winks", registered by inventor Joseph Assheton Fincher (UK Patent Office). The playful, slightly nonsensical word fitted a light-hearted flicking game perfectly, and the "winks" part survives in the name of the small discs themselves. Over time the spelling settled into the familiar "tiddlywinks", though traditional makers sometimes keep the older form — our own set is named the Travel Tiddledy Winks Set in a nod to that Victorian original.

What equipment do you need to play tiddlywinks?

You need very little, which is part of the charm. A standard tiddlywinks set contains a central cup called the pot, a set of small discs called winks — usually four colours with about six per colour in two sizes — and a larger disc called a squidger for each player. A flat surface, ideally with a felt mat, completes the setup. Because the kit is so compact, it travels easily; our Travel Tiddledy Winks Set packs the whole game into a tin so it can come along anywhere.