• Tiddlywinks Association
  - they used to exist
  Move: recognize as a fully recognized with funding restriction Passes

• Executive Board Meeting
• Chess club and tiddlywinks added to strategic games' rooms (just for storage)

• Fall 2000 Problem Set #7: Asymmetric Information, Signaling, and Game Theory
  Due in Class #24
• 2. The Massachusetts Institute of Tiddlywinks (the premier institution of its kind) hires
  Tiddlywinks Assistants (TAs) from among a pool of available applicants. Applicants
  vary in quality. Some are good (G); some are excellent (E); and some are stupendous (S).
  Unfortunately, an applicant?s types cannot be determined until approximately 1 A.M. on
  the morning the first problem set is due, by which time it is too late to change assistants.
  Applicants who are not chosen spend the semester playing in Tiddlywinks tournaments
  professionally. Good players earn $50 per semester; Excellent players earn $200 per
  semester and Stupendous players earn $400. The applicant pool is split evenly among the
  three types (each of whom knows her quality), and the Institute chooses randomly among
  those candidates who apply at the stated wage. Regardless of quality, no TA ever agrees
  to do it more than once.
  Each Tiddlywinks class has 100 students, whose V-N-M utility depends on their wealth
  and their TA?s quality and is given by:
  U = W if they take a class and get a good TA;
  U = W + 5 if they take a class and get an excellent TA;
  U = W + 7 if they take a class and get a stupendous TA.
  Each student takes only 1 class. There are no costs of offering courses other than hiring
  TAs. (The Professors, of course, work for Love of Learning.)
  A. Assume that the Institute maximizes expected student utility subject to the
  constraint that it not lose money. What wage should it offer to pay TAs, and what price
  should it charge for classes? What is the quality composition of the TA applicant pool (in
  terms of G, E, and S)?
  B. The new Dean has decided to do something about the quality of teaching at MIT.
  She has decreed that from now on, the average quality of TAs must be at least Excellent.
  What wage must be offered, and what price charged to students to bring this about?
  C. A Professor at CalTiddly (a rival institution on the West coast) has developed a
  test that can distinguish Good TAs from the other two types. How much should MIT be
  willing to pay (per course) for the right to use this test? The CalTiddly Professor also has
  a more advanced version of the test that distinguishes all three types, G, E, and S. How
  much more should MIT be willing to pay for this better test?
  D. Now suppose that there is no quality test, but that TAs can go to TA school. TA
  school takes one semester, and TAs earn no income while in school. The probability of
  successfully completing it and getting a B.T. degree depends on your type: S?s graduate
  for sure; E?s graduates with probability 0.9 and G?s with probability 0.1. Should MIT
  require TAs to have a B.T. degree? What wage should it offer to TAs with a degree?
  What is the quality composition of the TA pool that results (in terms of G, E, and S)?
  (Assume that all successful graduates will get a TA job at the wage MIT announces for
  such candidates. Assume that TAs are risk neutral V-N-M expected utility maximizers.
  Ignore discounting over time.)

• Introduction to Tiddlywinks
  Yan Wang, Greg Durrett
  Wed Jan 10 thru Fri Jan 12, 04:30-06:00pm, 4-145, Introduction to Tiddlywinks
  Sat Jan 13, Sun Jan 14, 09am-04:00pm, PDR #1 & #2, MITTwA IAP Tournament
• No limit but advance sign up required (see contact below)
  Repeating event. Participants welcome at any session
• Tiddlywinks was formalized in Cambridge University in 1955. The first American teams appeared in the 1960's with MIT being the dominant force, but winking participation has diminished in the last two decades in the USA. This informal class will be led by veteran tiddlywinks players of the newly revived MIT Tiddlywinks Association (MITTwA). A two day tournament will be held on Sat/Sun for more detailed exposure and the chance to play with many MIT alumni, students from around the country, and English representative. Get the chance to learn a little more about MIT history through tiddlywinks! Visit the website to learn more.
  Web: http://www.tiddlywinks.org
  Contact: Yan Wang, (607) 342-3402, yan_wang@mit.edu
  Sponsor: Yan Wang, 500 MEMORIAL DR # 439, 617 225-8839, yan_wang@mit.edu
  Latest update: 03-Jan-2007

• Page 13-0, photo of Dave Lockwood and Franz Christ
• Page 13-13, text by Tim Schiller

• Tiddlywinks team plans return to former glory
  The first thing the newly revived MIT Tiddlywinks Association wants people to know about the game of flicking small plastic discs into a cup is that it is not just a game of flicking small plastic discs into a cup.
• Instead, according to the North American Tiddlywinks Association's web site, tiddlywinks is a "complex game of strategy and tactics, which involves a fascinating mixture of manual dexterity and intellectual activity as well."
• Tiddlywinks started in the late 1800s in England. In 1955, it resurfaced at Cambridge University, where a group of undergraduates were looking for a game to represent their school. Tim Berners-Lee, father of the World Wide Web and recent recipient of the Draper Prize, played tiddlywinks.
• The game is played with sets of small, thin discs, known as winks, which are lined up on a mat. Using the larger disc, called the squidger, players pop the smaller discs into flight by snapping one side of the smaller disc with the edge of the larger one.
• There are two different versions. The first is the informal child's game in which the small discs are launched into a cup. The formal game is much more complicated with a series of rules and strategies.Â
• Yan Wang, president of the MIT Tiddlywinks Association (MITTwA), said that adult players like to compare tiddlywinks to golf, "because it requires physical dexterity in making shots," and also to chess, "because it requires thinking in turns and trying to maximize your strategy based on what your opponent could do." MITTwA is awaiting formal recognition from MIT's Association of Student Activities.
• MIT has a bright tiddlywinks history, beginning when the game spread across the Atlantic from Britain during the 1960s. "Although tiddlywinks was formalized in England, the dominant team throughout the 1960s through 1980s was MIT," said Wang. "There was much intercollegiate play with Harvard and Cornell, in addition to international trips to visit Cambridge and Oxford."Â
• In recent years, the game had fallen out of favor at MIT because not enough effort was devoted to bringing in new players, Wang explained.
• MITTwA, which was reborn this past September thanks to Wang, is hoping to change that with an Independent Activities Period (IAP) "Introduction to Tiddlywinks" that starts on Jan. 10 and ends on Jan. 12, each evening from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in Room 4-145.
• Members of the MITTwA who have been playing the game for years will teach the class. On Jan. 13 and 14 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., the MITTwA will be holding a tournament for novices and more advanced players alike in the Student Center (W20).
• "The tournament will hopefully attract students, staff and faculty who are eager to learn about this piece of MIT history and take part in it. There will be significant attendance by alumni from across the country who all look forward to reviving this part of their student experience," Wang said.
• For more information, please visit student.mit.edu/searchiap/iap-7491.html.
• A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on January 10, 2007.
• Written by: Sasha Brown, News Office

• Pages 3-4: "Squidges and Squops". [Not a reprint]

• Page 4: 2 Mar 1972 - Christian Science Monitor
  
  16 Mar 1972 - Cambridge Chronicle

• Page 8: 31 Mar 1972 - Los Angeles Times

• Page 5: 14 Feb 1973 - Tech Talk
• Page 21: 8 Apr 1973 - New York Times (date is correct)

• Page 17: 12 Feb 1973 - Cornell Sun

• MIT Once "Center of Winking" by LIV
• MIT has been called the center of a lot of things. In the 1970s, the New York Times recalled its history as a center of military research. The Chicago Tribune speculated about it being the next center of economic thought in the 80s, and in the 90s, another Times article referenced it as the center of computer science. Nobody ever mentioned that MIT was also once the center of winking, until recently.
• An interview in the San Diego Reader with alumnus Rick Tucker '80 reveals that MIT was considered the center of winking, or tiddlywinking, about 35 years ago.
• As Tucker tells it, "There have been a number of starts and stops, but in terms of MIT, there were two people who started tiddlywinks. One went to Cornell and one went to MIT. The Cornell player, Severin Drix, found a tiddlywinks set in a box of Trix cereal. The enduring team at MIT started in 1966 with Ferd Wulkan, who was Severin Drix's friend. They decided to form teams and compete against each other."
• Maybe it sounds trite, but there is a fair amount of strategy involved in Tiddlywinks—as well as a colorful lexicon. Remember what winks, squopping, and boondocking means? (If you don't, you can look it up here.)
• And if all this talk about Tiddlywinks has you itching to play some yourself, check out game prices on Amazon or eBay.

(Same as Technology Review May 1980)

"Magnethead the Champion" by Hani Sallum

• They say necessity is the mother of invention. In my mind, it has always been much more complex than this. However this is paraphrased, it sums up the birth of what we, as a group of eight to ten year olds, considered the single greatest sport in the history of Creation: Manhole Cover Tiddlywinks.
  
  Nothing came close.
  
  No free ball game at Fenway could drag us away from a even-odds street tournament; even-odds meaning even side of the street versus the odd side. No road race, plane show, or three-car pileup could sway us from the Big Tiddlywinks.
• Saturdays, when not spent on preparation for the upcoming tournament, were also days where a completely green novice could learn the basics of the game. Usually, this was done in pairs, as most beginners needed a partner to successfully manipulate a ``chip''. A pair of beginners were introduced to the basics of stance and delivery, as well as the ability to cooperate and work together. There was really a lot more to the big Tiddlywinks than people thought. Aim, of course, was always important, but the methods at which you approach and deliver the blow to the ``chip'' are as diverse as those involved in pool. For instance, depending on the distance away from the edge of the manhole cover where you bring down the cover you are holding, you change the angle at which the cover initially leaves the ground. The harder you hit, the further your chip will go. Also, depending on the angle to the cover you deliver the blow, you can add the Tiddlywink version of ``English'', which doesn't do much except add a little flair and spin to your shot. Really experienced players know all the neat tricks; how to make a chip curve in the air, how to make it spin around it's vertical axis for longer time in the air and less bounce, how to make the chip roll through an exact number of turns to control direction of bounce, and so on.
  
  Our tournaments were always on Sundays. We needed every single square foot of playing area possible, and the nearby park area didn't work so well. Not only did we make huge divots in the grass, but the noise scared the little children and their parents away. Manhole Cover Tiddlywinks was not a quiet game; think about it. During one tournament we had to abandon the pile of ``chips'' we had brought to the park just so the Police riot squad wouldn't catch us. Oh yeah, more than half of us had Police profiles by the time we were twelve. It was almost something to be proud of.
  
  Sundays were the days when the space we needed was available. A level, hardtop surface protected from the traffic was what we needed, and during the school year we kept mostly to supermarket parking lots. But during the Summer, when Tiddlywinks season was at it's peak, we were able to use the ideal public space for our tournaments. Most of us lived near the river, Charles River, and we had ready access to the best Tiddlywink court around: Memorial Drive. It was always blocked off during the day for public recreation, and we all knew that that meant us. At first some people tried to revoke our rights as citizens of the People's Republic of Cambridge since we would sometimes come close to denting their cars, (especially the novice pairs), but after a while they just dealt with us and stopped calling the Police. In fact, some people even spent a little while sitting on the grass, watching the tournament progress through its elimination matches (moving back a little whenever a novice team was playing, of course)

• The Darkest Day in the History of Larch Road
• by Hani Sallum
  
  Before my days of Manhole Cover Tiddlywinks, I was, for the most part, a calm and collected child. I busied myself with normal tot sort of things; building with legos, playing tag with kids on the street (always having to come in at sundown, smelling like a wet goat sometimes), climbing around on my friend's splinter-infested jungle gym in his backyard, and imagining I was any one of a million people I kept inside my head whenever I got bored with being me. [...]

• I have never seen a general discussion of MIT's strength in the playing of games.
  Few schools have produced-as many senior masters in chess as MIT has (five). KenRogoff, who is probably the most talented American player since Fischer, is a graduate student. There have been some very strong bridge experts, and MIT students have held world championships in Frisbee and Table Hockey. In tiddlywinks, the Institute has completely dominated the game for the past decade, turning out a clear majority of the world's best players. The accomplishments of Ferd T. Bull '68. Sunshine '69, Bob Henning~ '69, Mitch Wand '69, Tim Schiller '72. Bill Renke '73, Ross CalIon '73, Dave Lockwood '75 (featured in the Nov. 27 issue of People magazine) and Larry Kahn '75 should suggest to even the most casual winks fan the magnitude of MIT's contributions. If tiddlywinks becomes America's most popular strategic sport/game, as seems likely, the great engineering school on the Charles will have had a lot to do with its success.
• Fred Shapiro '74

• Z. : Aw, not now, Deadhead. They need me at the last meeting of the Tiddlywinks Club before the game