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'Mornington Crescent' is a game created by Geoffrey Perkins^[1] and popularised by the BBC Radio 4 programme ''I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue'' (''ISIHAC''). Named after the Mornington Crescent tube station, players make moves by announcing the names of stations on the London Underground, often citing obscure rules and regulations along the way. The winner is the first to announce "Mornington Crescent".
The game is intended as a parody of complicated strategy games, and particularly satirises the complex terminology that evolves around games such as contract bridge or chess.

Contents

Gameplay

Rules

Recurrent themes

Culture of secrecy

Publications

Variants

Cultural references

See also

References

External links

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 selection of destinations has strayed well beyond the stations of the London Underground, generally for comic effect. There have also been local variants such as the Slough version and Scottish variants during the Edinburgh Fringe (the show is often recorded on location). In one game, recorded in Luton, the moves ranged as far afield as the Place de l'Etoile, Nevsky Prospekt and Pennsylvania Avenue. A move to Luton High Street was ruled invalid, as 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 been known on occasions to state that the game is not in fact based on the London Underground system at all. Instead, he claims that the game was in existence long before the Tube system, and that the Tube (and by association, the entire layout of London) was based upon the game.
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.

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 perpetuates the main joke behind Mornington Crescent: that there are actually no rules nor 'game' at all — the game as such is played purely for entertainment value gained by watching others' reactions. The covert objective is to give the appearance of a game of great skill and strategy, with detailed and almost 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 the party games 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 the fiction 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.
There is some evidence to suggest that in the early days there were a few simple rules which the panellists knew and the audience did not. The fact that the audience did not know the rules was an in-joke for the panel. Since no one would be able to tell the difference, these rules were only loosely followed, and were eventually abandoned altogether. Given that all those intimately connected with the game naturally dissemble about its nature, it is quite hard to pin down what they were, but they may have been based on a 1952 A–Z of London, plus a few basic rules about which pages you could (or could not) turn to from the page you were on. The point of the game was to prevent the opponent turning to the page with Mornington Crescent on it in their next move. ^[2]

Recurrent themes

As the game has evolved, a number of common themes within the imaginary rules have arisen, and these are referred to in asides by the players:

★ 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'' — after the player claiming it had spent four minutes explaining the particular "rules" he was invoking, therefore making the move acceptable — but the loophole was quickly removed.

★ 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 alternate 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" (or "Knid") and "prig".

★ 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 (i.e. set in stone). Allusions are made to an elusive rulebook, and to Stovold, 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 admit that the rules are fictitious. This is because 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'. One of the charming paradoxes 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 broadcast on Christmas Eve 2005. It was named "In Search of Mornington Crescent" and narrated by Andrew Marr. ^[3]
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.
Finally, it is possible to play Mornington Crescent on any 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.^{[4] [5]} The Paris Métro game uses Château d'Eau station as the target. ^[6][7]

Cultural references

★ Science fiction writer Michael Moorcock included a reference to the game in a comic book which he scripted, titled ''Michael Moorcock's Multiverse''.

★ 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." ^[8]

★ 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. The correct answer was to name ''any'' station.. on the Perplex City tube map.

★ "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".

★ In Faction Paradox's Eleven-Day Empire, important relics are stored in the Stacks, a labyrinth constructed from ghosts of London Underground stations. The stations "can only be approached by following a complex sequence of ritual moves"; Mornington Crescent is particularly difficult to reach.

★ Douglas Hofstadter, in his book Metamagical Themas, references a game called Finchley Central, as described by Anatole Beck and David Fowler (mathematician). 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.

★ In the online comic Real Life Comics, the complexity of the game is compared to Cricket.

See also

★ List of games with unspecified rules

References

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)