A group of Cambridge students are marking the 70th anniversary of tiddlywinks becoming a competitive sport

This January marked 70 years since a group of Cambridge students founded the society that would convert the once-Victorian parlour game of tiddlywinks into a competitive sport.

The Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club (CUTwC) was founded in January 1955 by friends Bill Steen and Lawford Howells, along with other students at Christ’s College, who were later joined by Peter Downes.

The club has been running the “unexpectedly fun” game and Varsity matches since then.

The trio also wrote a thesis on the science of tiddlywinks, created new tiddlywinks terminology, and were responsible for the composition of the tiddlywinks anthem.

In the face of their “dismal chances of obtaining a blue,” the group decided that the “best chance was to invent [their] own sport – and preferably write the rules too.”

“In those days, the sportsmen were kings, the real stars at the university,” said Downes.

The group of students began writing to national papers and royalty in pursuit of matches. They wrote to Prince Philip challenging him to a match after an article in The Spectator accused him of cheating at the game. The Duke of Edinburgh instead appointed the Goons to participate on his behalf as his Royal Champions. “We’d been trying to play them for what seemed to be years – they really appealed to our sense of humour,” said Howells.

The Royal Tournament eventually took place in 1958, with 600 tickets for the Guildhall, Cambridge selling out in two hours. Cambridge emerged victorious, and tiddlywinks was brought to national fame.

The first Varsity tiddlywinks match took place that same year, when the Cambridge team beat their Oxford rivals. The Cambridge students received a “quarter blue” for representing the University.

To this day, tiddlywinks is still the only sport for which students at the University can be awarded a quarter blue. “In the tradition at Cambridge you can get a full blue if you play the proper games like rugger and football, things like that,” Steen explained.

Cambridge continues to produce successful players, with Cambridge’s Harley Jones winning the Oxford Open in November 2024. The Cambridge Open is due to take place 25-26 January this year.

The trio returned to the University this month for the 70th anniversary of the club. “It’s absolutely extraordinary, oh gosh they’re still at it,” said Steen.

“It practically cost us our degrees,”  the 91-year-old academic engineer and Honorary Fellow at Christ’s College added.

Downes, who studied Modern Languages and translated the tiddlywinks rules into French echoed: “I got a 2:1, and I sometimes wonder if I might have got a first had we not got carried away with all the attention.”

“The real joke is that we started this for the fun and to try and get a blue at Cambridge,” explained Steen.

According to Trinity College, Emmy Charalambous, the current CUTwC president, stated: “It’s important to know our history – how they took a Victorian parlour game and turned it into a competitive sport”, adding: “Part of the joke is how seriously it actually gets taken. There are people who have been playing for decades, who show up at tournaments, who still live and breathe tiddling.”