[3][4][5] However, the modern competitive game of tiddlywinks made a strong comeback at the University of Cambridge in 1955.

Then a scoring system is used to rank the players, based on the numbers of potted and unsquopped winks of each colour.

The important appeal of the game for many players is the required combination of manual dexterity and strategic thought as well as tactics.

[11] Tiddlywinkers often claim that the game combines physical skill (such as in snooker or golf) with the strategy of chess.

The winks and pot used in competitive play are standard, and are supplied by the English Tiddlywinks Association.

The pots are made of moulded plastic (historically always red), with specified diameters at the top and the base, and specified height.

Bank clerk[18] Joseph Assheton Fincher (1863–1900)[19][20] filed the original patent application for the game in 1888[21] and applied for the trademark Tiddledy-Winks in 1889.

[25] Throughout its history, many different varieties were produced to meet the marketplace demands, including those combining tiddledy-winks principles with tennis, basketball, baseball, croquet, cricket, football, golf, and other popular sports and endeavours.

More recently, singles and pairs tournaments have come to be the focus of competitive tiddlywinks, with only a few team matches being played each year.

There are several other less prestigious tournaments in England and the United States throughout the year, often with a format designed to encourage inexperienced players.

The results of tournaments and world championship matches are used to calculate Tiddlywinks Ratings,[33] which give a ranking of players.

The birth of the modern game can be traced to a group of Cambridge University undergraduates meeting in Christ's College on 16 January 1955.

The Duke presented a trophy, the Silver Wink, designed and made by Robert Welch[37] for the British Universities Championship.

[38] The English Tiddlywinks Association (ETwA) was founded on 12 June 1958[39][40] with the Reverend Edgar "Eggs" Ambrose Willis[41] as its first Secretary-General.

In 1962, the Oxford University Tiddlywinks Society (OUTS) toured the United States for several weeks under the sponsorship of Guinness.

[43] A match against the New York Giants was scheduled but the football players backed out at the last moment.

[44] A very prominent article appeared in Life magazine on 14 December 1962 with coverage of the Harvard team.

[45] Harvard's Gargoyle Undergraduate Tiddlywinks Society (GUTS) dominated winks in this era.

While the basic elements of the modern strategic game were devised by CUTwC in its early years, the rules have continued to be modified under the auspices of the various national tiddlywinks associations.

The first serious trans-Atlantic contact was established in 1972, when a team from MIT including Dave Lockwood[49] toured the UK.

The supreme ruling body in world contests is the International Federation of Tiddlywinks Associations (IFTwA).

In America, there has been a tradition of tiddlywinks in Washington D.C., Boston, Eastern Ohio, and Ithaca, New York.

[55] Since 2000, the World Singles championship has been dominated by Larry Kahn and Patrick Barrie, with each player having won seven matches (as of December 2019).