CUTwC drinking games

Please note that most of these rules are from the author’s memory, and even ignoring the whim of finesmasters may be inaccurate. If any deviation from common practice is noted, please let me know.


Non-card games

Card games

Card games with non-standard cards

Games with other equipment

On drinking games in general

While the primary game of the members of CUTwC is, of course, the noble sport of tiddlywinks, these versatile souls partake of a number of other games, often based around the concept of imbibing some of a beverage as a fine. Hence, these activities are popular in the bar after meetings, and towards the less hectic end of pub crawls.

Before we go on to a detailed description of the games, the fining system should be slightly clarified. The fines assume that the finee is drinking a pint of beer; some conversion is usually agreed for anyone suicidal enough to play a drinking game on spirits. The basic unit of fining is the finger - there are eight fingers in a pint. If someone tells you to “drink a fine", they probably mean a finger. Naturally, this amount roughly equates to lowering the level of the drink by the width of a finger. Games with high fines are often played with pencils, where a pencil is half a finger, or even a waffer (half a pencil); this decision is often made after playing the game on fingers and regretting it, other than being able to say “I remember when we played this on fingers". Some games require some multiple of this basic quantity to be drunk. It is encouraged to drink one’s fine before resuming participation in the game. While a player might be able to negotiate the substance and quantity being consumed (sips of whisky, “fizzy shite”, some scaling to allow for body mass, tea...) the games do rely on actions having consequences: a player who can cause others to incur a multi-pint fine at no personal risk will break the game mechanics.

Someone who is seated at the table but not included in a game, for example because he still has to drink his fine, is referred to as “whitebait” (as in a particularly puny fish), and should not be dealt into a card game, and cannot be considered as present in other games. It is traditional to indicate that one is “whitebait” by placing the back of one’s hand on one’s forehead, with optional finger wiggling to emulate a sea anemone. Note that we do not wish to cause medical harm to winkers: there is no shame in being whitebait beyond being excluded from play (and some kudos in having played aggressively or unluckily and ending up with a fine that you cannot trivially drink).

Card games

CUTwC makes substantial use of cards as a way to punish the liver. Many of these games are obviously derived from less painful versions that will only lose you money. Note that people have different priorities under these circumstances, and it is not unusual for the tactics required to make everyone else drink heavily to be different from the tactics required to minimise your own fine (or loss of money).

For most of these games the deal and order of play is traditionally clockwise as seen from above, although that’s not compulsory. A dealer who makes an error in dealing (dropping a card on the floor, accidentally dealing a card face up, accidentally skipping a player, including cards that should have been removed from the deck, shuffling cards inappropriately or putting discarded cards on the top of the deck rather than the bottom) has to drink a fine. A player who “revokes” and breaks the hand by playing illegally must drink a large fine. The same applies to cheating in any other way (a classic example being Tim Hunt, who pointed out that a player adjacent to him had revoked by playing illegally — something Tim knew only because he was looking at the other player’s unplayed cards).

Some card games require a small number of additional cards in play beyond those dealt to the players, typically to introduce some randomness: play can be deterministic if you know what cards must be available. CUTwC uses the (apparently Norwegian) terminology “drittsekk” for these cards, and the deck of cards in play is “shortened” by selectively removing some cards from the game until the combination of drittsekk and cards dealt to players is appropriate.

Famous winkers cards

CUTwC has, over the years, produced several generations of “famous winkers” cards. The first editions were produced by Ed Wynn, and subsequent versions have been created by Andrew Garrard (the web maintainer). The most recent edition is from 2021, although a 2025 “platinum jubilee” edition is likely.

The card combine a traditional (French, poker) playing card deck with category scoring inspired by the “Top Trumps” packs (especially, I believe, a “horror” edition). Each card contains a representation of a “famous” tiddlywinks player; the photos are not intended to be flattering. The categories are:

Horror rating
How much this person is likely to disconcert a novice to the game — that is, if you had a nervous fresher, would this be the ideal partner, or scare them? A rating of 100 implies that you might want to warn them first. Players are encouraged to take pride in a high rating, unless everyone would find it funnier if they don’t. (But seriously, please don’t get too offended. Nobody claimed that the ratings were fair. You may substitute the word “intense” for “horrible” if it helps, although the correlation is obviously not absolute.)
Beer factor
(“Fear factor” in the original cards.) How much this person is known for drinking (not just beer). A rating of 100 implies, e.g., getting in some warm-up pints before a pub crawl.
Winking power
The most obvious category: how good is this person at winks? Those with winking power near 100 have been world champions.
Narg points
A combination of academic prowess and a propensity for obsessing over detail or intellectual busywork. Historically a rating of roughly 50 implies an undergraduate degree, although a Southampton degree counts negative (for traditional reasons to do with club rivalries). Doctorates help. High ratings are, or have been, lecturers, and were when they became famous.

Ratings run from 1 to 100, and no two cards have the same score in a category.

The suits also had meaning, as defined by the original card creator:

♦️ Diamonds
Famous for being a member of CUTwC
♠️ Spades
“Women and mad people” (perhaps “eccentric” would be fairer)
♥️ Hearts
Famous for winking prowess/fixation
♣️ Clubs
“Horrible people” (not quite the same as horror rating)

There are also a couple of jokers — in the past these have been Dave Tarrell (of Queens’ bar) and the Soirese, and they are now represented by early luminaries of the game (Lawford Howells and Peter Downes) — these cards are marked “or is it?” in deference to the Conjectures tradition of a joker representing the next un-dealt card, and for the impersonation therefore to be a guess.

Scores and, as much as possible, card suit and rank are assigned when a person is first “considered famous” (typically determined by the timing of the production of whichever deck it was in which they were first included) — a number of players have significantly improved in winking capability or academic prowess since their first inclusion (and occasional other categories), and keeping the original values when a new deck is produced is a way to mess with those too foolish to treat their early fame as a mark of pride. The need to keep numbers unique has occasionally produced anomalies where there have been insufficient gaps for a new player to be inserted with the ideal number, so all scoring has at best been approximate (and subject to the impression of those contributing to the design, in the case of players who may not be that famous). As an exception, a couple of players have been moved out of spades to make room for more women; this does not necessarily imply a change in their perceived degree of eccentricity.

The criteria for inclusion are a bit arbitrary and have changed over time, but the current curator’s approach is that people must have played for more than the duration of their undergraduate career and/or been to national tournaments, and be people that new players are likely to meet or (especially the posthumous entries) hear discussed — they allow newer players to be vaguely familiar with the people they may meet at a tournament; this is especially true with Conjectures, where impersonations of the people on the cards allows for some characteristics to be shared — this is also the only game for which the actual categories come into play (otherwise they are used as normal playing cards). Players who have not been seen for a while and who are unlikely to be met by CUTwC students tend to fall out of the deck, since limited space is available. The current decks are CUTwC-centric, and so have limited representation of players in other clubs/localities.