The game of Mornington Cresent

It’s a bit of a surprise to find a Radio 4 game here! But it is a national institution, I suppose, and therefore worthy of a review.
I myself have always seen Mornington Crescent as a bit of a parody of life itself. Yes, there are rules; no, not everybody seems to know them; and no, those who break them don’t always seem to be penalised. But there is a Humph: someone who knows and understands what’s going on, and who as we speak is probably sitting somewhere in heaven, going through all the old transcripts and working out who won. Justice will be done, one day.
There: how’s that for a surreal review of a surreal game?!

I thought it was entirely made up and it never had any rules in the first place, and i was quite warmed to see that Qype had reached the abstract heights of having reviews for something so close to not really existing at all.
I love it by the way. For quite a long time I had no idea what was going ok but figured it was some kind of joke.

Mornington Crescent is a parody game that features in the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel game I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. I am going to miss Humph Littleton who recently died and I loved the Mornington Cresent game even if I had no clue what it was about. I wondere if the game will now contine or even the programme. anyway this is supposedly what it was about.
The original game of Mornington Crescent was invented in the late nineteenth century by the drivers of Hackney carriages as a serious attempt to design a one-​way system around the increasingly busy area of Euston in London. It is variously credited to Arthur Mowe, a Cockney, and Horstmann Ure, a second generation Silesian immigrant.
A simple, but profitable, variation on the game is still played by London taxi drivers, because their motto is He was a stranger, and I took him in.
Cabbies try to include Mornington Crescent in every journey. This helps to maximise fares for journeys which would not naturally contain a diversion via the Euston district. Ever wondered where the ** you were going?
To the radio show…
Mornington Crescent, popularised by the BBC Radio 4 programme I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, was named after the Mornington Crescent London Underground (tube) station, which is at the junction of Camden High Street; Eversholt Street and Hampstead Road in London postcode area NW1.
Players make moves by announcing the names of stations within the London Underground system, the winner being the first to introduce Mornington Crescent.
When the game was first played it was based on the 1952 pocket A-​Z and a simple formula dictating to which pages one could move and to which pages one could not move. The art of the game was to make a move that made it impossible (ideally) to move to one of the pages on which Mornington Crescent appeared on the next move or in three moves time, or even in five moves time (brains of a Grand Master required!) — i.e. to stop the opposition arriving at Mornington Crescent.
The original (in) joke was that listeners were not told what the rules were so had no idea what was going on. Later the panellists realised that since nobody knew what the rules were there was no point sticking to them — so they didn’t.
The game became a bit of a free for all and players like Willie Rushton invented gambits to justify their departure from the straight and narrow — or should that be the Circle Line. Eventually the rules were so often ignored that they fell into total disuse and the game became somewhat surreal.
BUT GREAT fun!!!