Friends who turned tiddlywinks into a competitive sport mark 70 years of club Three friends who helped start competitive tiddlywinks so they could represent Cambridge University at sport have marked the 70th anniversary of the prestigious institution’s tiddlywinks club.
They established competitive rules, wrote a thesis The Science Of Tiddlywinks, coined new terminology, designed club ties and later oversaw the creation of the Tiddlywinks Anthem.
They focused their attentions instead on tiddlywinks – a game in which players try to get small plastic discs into a cup by pressing one piece against another to make it fly through the air – seeking to turn it into a competitive sport.
Bill Steen, 91, said the group were “hopeless as athletes” and saw the game as their chance of obtaining a prestigious blue – the highest honour that can be earned by a Cambridge sportsperson.
A challenge was accepted by the Daily Mirror newspaper and a match was played in the Cock Tavern in Fleet Street in June 1955, when the club was introduced to the world.
