Ticktack
historical English tables game
Ticktack or Tick-Tack, is an historical English tables game for two players using a board similar to that used today for Backgammon and other tables games. Like its much more elaborate French counterpart, Trictrac, it has the unusual feature that there are several different ways in which it can be won, including Toots and Rovers.
History
Ticktack is mentioned as early as 1586 as a game played by English country gentlemen in inclement weather along with three other games of the tables family: Lurch, Irish and Doublets. The earliest and only comprehensive set of rules appeared in 1672 by Willughby. However, Cotton gives an overview in The Compleat Gamester of 1674, an account which was reprinted until 1754, after which the game faded from view, being reported in Halliwell-Phillips (1881) as archaic.
Name
Willughby says that the name Ticktack came from the rule that if a man is touched, it must be played. Cotton agrees and likens it to "touch" and "take". However, the game appears to be related to French Trictrac – there are several common features – which was commonly thought to derive from the rattling noise of the dice being thrown against the side rail of the board, however, Fiske suggests it may be "merely alliterative reduplication (having reference to the route taken by the men), signifying a forward and back movement after the manner of 'zig-zag'; or it may be the application... of an onomatopoetic word already existing (signifying any sharp, clattering sound)."
Players and equipment
Ticktack was a game for two players using two dice and 15 men apiece, and played on a tables board (see illustration) with 12 playing positions or points on each side. In Willughby's diagram of the board, the points are numbered from 1 to 12 on each side of the board, the numbers running in parallel.
“Ticktack” enters the record as historical English tables game. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ticktack, historical and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 25, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q109830444. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1586, 1672, 1674 and 1754.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ticktack” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.