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Mornington Crescent is a parody of obscure and complex game analysis, such as that engaged in by chess afficianados. It was introduced to the British public by the BBC Radio 4 programme I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, which is itself a parody of panel games. It is named after Mornington Crescent tube station in central London, which is in turn named after the road called "Mornington Crescent" in the London Borough of Camden, near Camden High Street.
How the game is played
In the basic form of the game, players successively name railway stations on the London Underground network. The first player to say "Mornington Crescent" wins. Use of a map of the London Underground is permitted for beginners, although serious players would never resort to it.
When a novice player asks what other rules govern the order in which stations may be named, he or she is tradtionally told that it would take to long to explain all the rules, and that (unless he or she can find a rulebook) the best way to learn is to observe a few games and "pick them up as you go along." Then the bewildered novice will sit and endure games such as the following real game from 1996 (source: [1 (http://www.dunx.org/cgi-bin/white-rose/forum?forum=Game2&groupBy=id&group=000&tail=40)]):
- Rob: Leamington Road
- James: Stanley Avenue
- Jo: Ealing Broadway (a cunning move on the inside pass)
- Rob: Victor Mews (thus effectively blocking the follow through)
- stephen: Paddington
- Eric: Brixton High Street
- Rob: Albemarle Street
- Jo: Picadilly (which is allowable under the Finsbury rules; lucky we weren't playing it along with the Exeter Conjunction)
- debra: Russell Square
- Zog - The Mighty: Nort by North-East (to Marble Arch)
- Smiling Rob: Mornington Crescent
Rules
Spoiler warning: Details traditionally suppressed from novice players follow.
During play, players often invoke obscure but authoritative-sounding rules and names of gambits. These 'rules', in fact, are randomly conceived, and the more ludicrous sounding the better, e.g. "once Tooting Bec has been declared, this move is not allowed unless two or more players are in knip". Some, by dint of long use, have become "traditional;" but even these are often still ill-defined. For example, although it is common to hear "we're stuck in a Dollis Hill loop", opinion differs as to just what a Dollis Hill loop is or how it can be escaped.
The chair of ISIHAC, Humphrey Lyttelton, often introduces variants and alternative rules, for example "the French version ('Chateau d'Eau')", or "the King Edward Rules".
Although technically it is possible to win by simply announcing "Mornington Crescent", that would completely defeat the purpose of the game. It has happened at least once on air, albeit after the player concerned spent four minutes discussing the particular rules they were playing by. The true intent of the game is to be funny, and all other rules are invoked solely in the service of this objective.
Culture of secrecy
Those in the know about the game enjoy pretending to others that all the rules are real, and that they really are in a rule book. The alleged rulebook remains eternally elusive, and this supreme obscurity of the rules is a source of humour to players. Players frequently make reference to the International Mornington Crescent Society (IMCS), allegedly the dominant rule-making body for the game.
Radio 4 once broadcast the first part of a "two part documentary" on Mornington Crescent, which gave a history of the game through the ages. The promised second part, which would give an in-depth explanation of the rules, was, naturally, never broadcast.
As Lyttelton has put it on the show, "[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." (Samantha, the indescribably lovely scorer for I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue is equally fictitious.)
If Mornington Crescent is played well then an observer may come to realise what rules really operate, namely those of comedy, and other newcomers' initial bafflement will be amusing to all concerned. However, the game is far from a mere prank; afficianados legitimately play the game against one another for recreation even when not in the presense of uninitiates.
Among Mornington Crescent players, there is a taboo against admitting that the rules are fictitious. Some interpret this as an attempt to maintain the ignorance of outsiders. Another explanation is that admitting what's really going on is incompatible with actually playing the game: saying "but the rules aren't real" immediately spoils a previously engaging discussion of the strategy of shunting players who are in knip on the Piccadilly Line. It seems likely that different participants see different reasons for maintaining this silence.
The former interpretation of the taboo has led some to aggressively point out that there are no real rules whenever there's a possibility of someone being misled. Indeed, there is a hint of a reverse taboo: proponents of full disclosure see it as morally reprehensible to leave a newcomer in the dark. The debate remains unresolved, but it appears that all sides at least find it acceptable to privately explain the real situation to someone who asks.
Real rules
There is some evidence suggesting that in the early days there were a few simple rules, which the panellists knew and the audience didn't. The fact that the audience didn't 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.
Two books of 'rules' and history have been published, The Little Book of Mornington Crescent (2001; ISBN 0752844229) by Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer and Humphrey Lyttelton and Stovold's Mornington Crescent Almanac (2001; ISBN 0752847295) by Graeme Garden.
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 matches the form of Mornington Crescent. While the nomic is no longer played, the resulting set of rules for Mornington Crescent remains.
Miscellaneous
Science fiction writer Michael Moorcock included a reference to the game in a comic book which he scripted, entitled Michael Moorcock's Multiverse. Since the comic was published in the US, the reference was clearly an in-joke for any British readers who happened to get hold of an imported copy.
In the 1980s postal gaming hobbyists invented a variant of Mornington Crescent for postal play, called Finchley Central.
Calvin and Hobbes' Calvinball bears some resemblance to this game.
One episode of Garden and Brooke-Taylor's television series, The Goodies (also starring Bill Oddie) featured a card game called "Spat", which bore many similarities to Mornington Crescent. In it a hapless Bill was being taught Spat by Graeme and Tim but kept on accidentally breaking the increasingly surreal rules.
In the Star Trek episode A Piece of the Action (broadcast in 1968), Captain Kirk spontaneously invents a card game called fizzbin after being captured, in order to distract the henchmen guarding him. Fizzbin supposedly has extremely complex and confusing rules, similar to Mornington Crescent
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