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

Mornington Crescent is a spoof^[1] game featured in the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue which satirises complicated strategy games, particularly the obscure jargon involved in such games as contract bridge or chess.

The game consists of each panellist in turn announcing a landmark or street, most often a tube station on the London Underground system. The apparent^[1] aim is to be the first to announce "Mornington Crescent", a station on the Northern Line. Interspersed with these turns is humorous discussion amongst the panellists and host regarding the rules and legality of each move, as well as the strategy the panellist is utilising. Despite appearances however, there are no rules to the game ^[2], and the naming of both the stations and rules is based on stream of consciousness association and improvisation^[3]. Thus the game is intentionally incomprehensible ^[4].

Origins

Mornington Crescent first appeared in the opening episode of the sixth series of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, broadcast on 22 August 1978. Although five episodes transmitted in 1974–1975 are still lost, Mornington Crescent makes no appearance before 1978 but was played in every surviving episode of the sixth series.

The origin of the game is not clear. One claim is that it was invented by Geoffrey Perkins,^[5] who stated in an interview that Mornington Crescent was created as a non-game.^[6] According to chairman Humphrey Lyttelton, the game was invented to vex the series producer, who was unpopular with the panellists. One day the team were drinking when they heard him coming. "Quick," one said, "Let's invent a game with rules he'll never understand."^[7]

Barry Cryer, on Radio 4's Today programme, stated that Geoffrey Perkins did not invent the game, which he said had been around since the sixties. In The Guardian dated 6 September 2008, Bunny May, a contributor to the letters page, claims that he (along with John Junkin and David Clime) invented the game in 1970, in an actors' club on Shaftesbury Avenue called Gerry's (which was run at the time by Gerald Campion), in order to infuriate and bemuse patrons whom they found boring or boorish.

However, a "game" called "Finchley Central" was described in the Spring 1969 issue of the mathematical magazine manifold, edited by Ian Stewart and John Jaworski at the University of Warwick. The article was referred to by Douglas Hofstadter in his book Metamagical Themas. The game is referred to as an "English game" in an article on "non-games" as follows:

Two players alternate naming the stations of the London Underground. The first to say "Finchley Central" wins. It is clear that the "best" time to say "Finchley Central" is exactly before your opponent does. Failing that it is good that he should be considering it. You could, of course, say "Finchley Central" on your second turn. In that case, your opponent puffs on his cigarette and says, "Well, shame on you".^[8]

"Gameplay" on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue

The objective was to give the appearance of a game of skill and strategy, with complex and long-winded rules and strategies, in parody of games and sports in which similarly circuitous systems have evolved. In general, Humphrey Lyttelton (Humph) would describe special rules to apply to that session, such as "Trumpington's Variations" or "Tudor Court Rules", so that almost every episode featuring Mornington Crescent introduced a variant.

There have been many such supposed variations; in one of them, a player whose movement is blocked is considered to be "in nid" and is forced to remain in place for the next three moves. This tends to block the other players, putting them into nid as well and causing a roadblock. In one episode of I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue, every player ended up in nid and the supposed rule had to be suspended so that the round could continue.

Over time the destinations named by the panellists expanded beyond the Underground. ISIHAC was recorded around the United Kingdom, and the game was occasionally modified accordingly; such cases included versions in Slough and Leeds, as well as one in Scotland played during the Edinburgh Fringe arts festival (where it was changed to being Morningside Crescent)^{[citation needed]}. In one episode, recorded in Luton, panellists named locations as far 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 remote. In other episodes an attempt was supposedly made to expand the territory to Manhattan (via Heathrow and JFK), but there was some disagreement as to whether or not the New York subway system was suited to the game.

Lyttelton joked that the game pre-dated the London Underground. "Tudor Court Rules" were described as "A version of the game formerly 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."

Those who asked for the rules were told "NF Stovold’s Mornington Crescent: Rules and Origins" was out of print. They were also advised that "your local bookshop might have a copy of The Little Book of Mornington Crescent by Tim, Graeme, Barry and Humph."

Further popularity

Mornington Crescent is played widely online, in the spirit of the radio series. Games are played by fans on Usenet, in diverse web forums,^[9][10] and on the London Underground itself. A Facebook application has also been produced.^[11]

Finchley Central and Mornington Crescent were also popular in the UK play by mail / postal games hobby, and were "played" by post in a number of play-by-mail magazines in the 1980s.

Publications

In the 1990s, Radio 4 broadcast a Christmas special: Mornington Crescent Explained, a "two-part documentary" on Mornington Crescent, part one being a history of the game and part two the rules. At the end of part one it was announced that part two had been postponed due to "scheduling difficulties".

Another documentary was broadcast on Christmas Eve 2005. It was named In Search of Mornington Crescent and narrated by Andrew Marr.^[12] This has since also been released on a BBC Audiobook CD.

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.

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."^[13]
• 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 titled "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 Mornington Crescent as a game created by the fictional company Wopuld Ltd., described as being "based on the map of the London underground with a complicated double-level board".
• 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 in the mistaken belief that it is a real game.
• A song by Mickey Simmonds entitled "Mornington Crescent" appears on the Bonzo Dog Band’s 2007 album, Pour l'Amour des Chiens. The songs puns on London Underground names and includes the lyric, "You’re harder to understand than Mornington Crescent!"

See also

• List of games with concealed rules

References

External links

• The BBC Radio 4 Mornington Crescent message board
• H2G2 Mornington Crescent Appreciation Society
• A list of variations mentioned in ISIHAC games
• Automated version of the game, against a server, following the short rules and rule 7b.
• Encyclopaedia Morningtonia Wiki and the original