Mornington Crescent (game)

Mornington Crescent is an improvisational comedy game featured in the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (ISIHAC), a series that satirises panel games. An earlier game, Finchley Central, is remarkably similar.

The gameplay consists of each panellist in turn announcing a landmark or street, most often a London Underground station. The ostensible aim is to be the first to announce "Mornington Crescent", a station on the Northern line. Interspersed with the turns is humorous discussion amongst the panellists and host regarding the rules and legality of each move, as well as the strategy the panellists are using. However, as all of these rules and strategies are fictional, the actual aim of the game is to entertain the other participants and listeners by inventing and discussing them.

Origins

Finchley Central

A similar game called Finchley Central was described in the Spring 1969 issue of the mathematics magazine Manifold, edited by Ian Stewart and John Jaworski at the University of Warwick. It is a humorous game in which two players take turns naming stations in the London Underground. The first person to name Finchley Central is the winner, with humour coming from the fact that there is nothing stopping either player from naming the station at any time. Mathematics professor Jonathan Partington compares Finchley Central to the concept of polite refusal, describing the reciprocity and the game's solutions to be isomorphic as he somewhat facetiously notes:

An opening move of "Finchley Central" is too much of a cheat, and you might wish to start with, say, Liverpool Street, when, assuming that your opponent isn't rude enough to reply with Finchley Central, leaves you with a mate on your second move (though you probably would prefer to stall by playing, say, Bank, in the hopes of a more spectacular win later).