Are we Barbarians? The 1898 Cairo Convention is surely the only rules that a gentlemen would consider playing. Unfortunately the last printed copy of them was lost in the trenches in Gallipoli, but I’m sure we all remember them clearly as they were explained to us. As for the very notion that stations in the grand game of Mornington Crescent should in any way reflect the actual physical tube stations, while the mind recoils in horror at the very idea!
No, keep away from the river and make sure not to get stuck in there.
Moving a couple of commas around does not an original work make. I bet you’re one of those people who takes Worcestershire’s word as gospel as well.
Just out of curiosity, what serious questions do you imagine one could have about it?
The only question I can see is “I don’t find this the least bit amusing, so why do some people insist on pretending to play and theorize about a made-up game as if it is funny?”
It’s the same sort of sentiment that leads people to start threads with titles such as “Am I the only one who finds [popular book/movie/tv show/music] to be [negative adjective]?”
I think that you win the game if the person whose turn it is right after yours is TOTALLY planning to announce “Mornington Crescent” the next time around, but you beat him to it. And I think you can chalk up a win if you announce it on your very first turn and walk out, thus sparing yourself any of the foolishness. Honestly, the game always seemed to me to be a reflection of what the other people at the table think of you. If you are not particularly well-liked, then you will never be able to announce it without people grumbling that you picked the wrong time to do so. If you are well-liked, you’ll probably get away with it.
I always figured the game ended when all participants got bored with it.
Much like Monopoly, in my experience.
Idle Thoughts: Some of our Brit games are rather complicated; perhaps you might like a slightly simpler game like Go Johnny Go Go Go Go.
Monopoly ends when I win. 
You beastly chav … I’ll have you know that Chas Worcestershire is a spiv, akin to his Uncle Hector.
As to Lily Sturgess’s magnum opus, I know from a family acquaintance that she scrupulously went through Montwood’s manuscript and used Rogets’ to change every noun with more than 6 letters in the entire text.
And if she hadn’t, then Lord de Chevrille would never have been able to apply the Richmond Gambit and score that upset victory over Blatford in the 1928 Eel Pie Cup.
Is that the kind of world you’d want to live in?
That’s an all too common thesis, but it fails on the little known technical point that de Chevrille suffered from acute agraphia. He couldn’t read or write any word with more than five letters. So when he deployed the Richmond Gambit he was using exclusively Montwood’s script.
'Twas a good thing but …
Mornington Crescent seems to be a little like Douglas Adams.
If I read – or listen to, as the case may be – the originals, they’re amusing. But when people do them on message boards, it’s never quite right somehow.
I think a good analogy of Mornington Crescent is the madeup trivia game we have here. Some people make up trivia that sounds realistic while other make up silly ridiculous trivia that no way in a billion years even sounds true. That’s how MC is. Some people making up rules that sound real while others (IMHO not understanding the point or overdoing it) make up rules or rulebooks or historical games that sound unrealistic. That may be what oara is picking up on.
Well, there’s the ones in the OP. I mean, if people played a game where they just made hooting noises at each other for a long time, I would kinda see how they could have fun doing that, but I could also see why somebody might say “am I missing something” about it.
And I could see being pretty annoyed if when I asked the question, everybody around me started hooting. Which they would.
This is probably not the place for this discussion, but those are perfectly good questions to ask. That’s one way to learn things about artistic works and to have one’s aesthetic tastes expanded.
Which is why I held my tongue (fingers) after my first response. This would not be the correct forum for a rousing game of Mornington Crescent.
I’ve played a game where that seemed to be the ultimate scenario every time. Two players are state leaders foreign to eachother and two other players act as translators during diplomatic talks… Fun much the same way Mornington Crescent is.
I daresay you’re making light of the Gdansk Conference of '58 wherein the British and Soviet representatives, by way of an interpreter who spoke only English and Portugese, and another who spoke only Russian and Korean but whose Korean secretary had summered in Lisbon before the war, hammered out the agreement that lead to the formation of the definitive Code of Laws of the Game that would be applied at the Rome Olympics (which ended up with South Africa taking the gold).