I Never Knew There Was a Word for It - Adam Jacot De Boinod [125]
murgatroyd a badly manufactured tiddlywink, flat on both sides
squopped of a free tiddlywink that lands on another wink
blitz an attempt to pot all six winks of your own colour early in the game
crud a forceful shot whose purpose is to destroy a pile of winks completely
lunch to pot a squopped wink (usually belonging to an opponent)
boondock to send an opponent’s tiddlywink a long way away, preferably off the table
LOW ROLLERS
The number of nicknames for marbles indicates what a popular game this is too (and still so in the age of the Game Boy® and the computer). In the dialect of the north-east of England, for example, marbles have been known as alleys, boodies, glassies, liggies, marvels, muggles, penkers, parpers and scudders. That’s just the start of it:
flirt (Yorkshire) to flick a marble with finger and thumb
fullock (Shropshire) to shoot a marble in an irregular way by jerking the fist forward instead of hitting it off by the force of the thumb only
deegle (Cheshire) a stolen marble
neggy-lag (Yorkshire) the penultimate shot
hawk (Newfoundland) to win all an opponent’s marbles
smuggings! (UK teen slang mid 19C) mine! (the exclamation used at the end of a game of marbles or spinning tops when the child who shouted first was allowed to keep the toy in question)
DICEMAN
When you get a little older, it becomes more interesting to throw objects with a more challenging set of possibilities:
snake eyes (North American slang 1929) getting double ones, the lowest score (supposedly resembling a snake’s stare)
box cars (underworld slang 1937) double 6 (from their similarity to the wheels of freight cars)
gate to stop the dice moving before they have actually come to rest
ARRERS
Many grown-up indoor games are found in that fine old British institution, the pub. One pastime in particular speaks of generations of players with fine imaginations and plenty of time on their hands:
monger a person who deliberately scores many more points than needed to win the game
Robin Hood when a dart sticks into a previous dart
married man’s side the left-hand side of a dart board (numbers 12, 9, 14, 11, 8 and 16) that would get a reasonable score (the rationale being a married man should always play safe)
right church, wrong pew hitting a double but the wrong number
slop darts that score, but not where you wanted them
masonry darts darts thrown so that they miss the board entirely and hit the wall instead
spray ’n’ pray darts thrown by an irate and less talented player, rather quickly
bunting the art of throwing while on your knees
FEVVERS
And that’s just a fraction of the jargon. All the scores in darts have their own names too. Remember, when playing darts you’re counting down, not up, starting from a set 301 or 501 and trying to end up with exactly zero, a process which is known as doubling out:
madhouse double 1 (i.e. what you’re left in until you finish the game by achieving it)
fevvers a score of 33 (from the 19C Cockney tongue twister: ‘thirty-three feathers on a thrush’s throat’)
scroat a dart that is aimed for treble 20, but ends up in double 20
fish and globe a score of 45 (when competing on a fairground darts stall, 45 was a score that traditionally would win the customer a small paper bag of peanuts which later became the offer of a jar (globe) and a goldfish)
Lord Nelson a score of III (as he had one eye, one arm, one leg)
POKER FACE
A cool head and an expressionless face will serve you well in a game that otherwise relies on luck – unless of course you have other tricks up your sleeve:
runt a poker hand worth less than a pair
motown a poker hand consisting of ‘jacks-on-fives’
vole the winning by one player of all the tricks of a deal; a grand-slam
pone the player who cuts the cards
hop a secret move made after the cut which puts the cards back in the original position and negates that cut for the cheat’s benefit
crimp to bend