I mean, I get that it’s naming subways in England…and that it’s acting like everyone is a perfect gentleman and making it out to be like it’s one of the most important discussions in the world, all dressed up with pretending there are huge strategies and good plays and gamebits…
…but is that it? Am I missing something here? It just doesn’t strike me as a very fun or interesting game. What am I missing that seems to make it fun for those who love it?
Is it just one of those things that you have to have the right humor for, like Monty Python?
Clearly, you need to read Lord Montwood’s musings on the subject in his foreword to the Sixth Edition of The Gentleman’s Guide to Getting Out of Nidd On A Sunday.
I prefer the “Collected Essays on the Thursday Forecoft Line Schedule, Appendix B” by Matilda Worthington-Smythe. Try to get the much superior 1924 edition, with maps.
You’ve actually got the point. The show that included Mornington Crescent was a show called “I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue”, a show on Radio 4 that satirized panel game shows. Another one of the games on there was “Jigsaw”, which had the contestants putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
So Mornington Crescent is just a fake game the panelists all have to adlib to sound believable.
Which reminds me Telemark, I need to return your copy of the '24 edition … I borrowed it after that smashingly boozy knees-up on the chamomile lawn last summer. Cracking read, that too.
I believe Baroness Sturgess of Lynne Regis was the author of the definitive text on the subject (I think those who claim she plagarised Bertie Montwood were being quite beastly about it). It is a question of aligning future expectations with past experience and navigating a path through the gap in the middle.
Come on, next you’ll be telling me that there is no Santa Claus, or that Aldwych tube station is permanently closed (and hence not available as a move under the High Holborn variant rules of 1932).
I suppose some people consider “High Holborn” a meaningful rule set, but then , some people also consider it acceptable to serve a rooibos at afternoon tea. We should try and maintain some standards in our discourse on this subject.
I think you’re both forgetting that the Royal Commission of '83 settled this matter by taking Aldwych off the table in exchange for permitting the Holbrook-Exeter exception to be applied during Lent.
…if you’re saying you don’t find Monty Python funny, then yes, the appeal of Mornington Crescent will be inpenetrable, you snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings!
Surely you’re aware that acts of aggressive flatulence on Christmas Day were declared a violation of the Laws of the Game in King George VI’s 1948 Christmas speech, unless Notting Hill has been played no less than eleven but no more than seventeen times during the current session.
I don’t want to jump into the game. I’m not skilled enough to join in myself having only just started to learn some of the finer points of the recent variants.
I was curious if Idle might like Number Wang a bit better. The math is quite complex but the basics are much simpler so it’s a bit easier to follow from the outside.
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