Finchley Central is a humorous game in which two players take turns naming

stations Station may refer to: Agriculture * Station (Australian agriculture), a large Australian landholding used for livestock production * Station (New Zealand agriculture), a large New Zealand farm used for grazing by sheep and cattle ** Cattle stat ...

in the

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...

. The ''first'' person to name Finchley Central is the winner, with humor coming from the fact that there is nothing stopping either player from naming the station at any time. Mathematics professor

Jonathan Partington Jonathan Richard Partington (born 4 February 1955) is an English mathematician who is Emeritus Professor of pure mathematics at the University of Leeds. Education Professor Partington was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Trinity College ...

compares Finchley Central to the concept of polite refusal, describing the reciprocity and the game's solutions to be

isomorphic In mathematics, an isomorphism is a structure-preserving mapping or morphism between two structures of the same type that can be reversed by an inverse mapping. Two mathematical structures are isomorphic if an isomorphism exists between the ...

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 A bank is a financial institution that accepts Deposit account, deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital m ...
, in the hopes of a more spectacular win later).

Possibly inspired by

The New Vaudeville Band The New Vaudeville Band was an English group created by songwriter Geoff Stephens in 1966 to record his novelty composition "Winchester Cathedral", a song inspired by the dance bands of the 1920s and a Rudy Vallée megaphone-style vocal. To hi ...

's song "Finchley Central" ("Finchley Central / is two-and-sixpence / from Golders Green on the Northern Line..."), the game was first described by the mathematicians

Anatole Beck Anatole Beck (19 March 1930 – 21 December 2014) was an American mathematician. Education and academic career Beck graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1947, studied at Brooklyn College (Bachelor's degree 1951) and in 1956 received his Ph ...

and David Fowler in the Spring 1969 issue of ''

Manifold In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a N ...

'' magazine (''A Pandora's Box of Non-games'' page 32). Beck and Fowler note,

It is clear that the ‘best’ time to say Finchley Central is exactly before your opponent does. Failing that it is good that he should be considering it. You could, of course, say ‘Finchley Central’ on your second turn. In that case, your opponent puffs on his cigarette and says, ‘Well… Shame on you.’

Finchley Central became the basis for the game

Mornington Crescent Mornington Crescent is a terraced street in Camden Town, London Borough of Camden, Camden, London, England. It was built in the 1820s, on a greenfield site just to the north of central London. Many of the houses were subdivided into flats dur ...

in the

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

series ''

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue ''I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue'' is a BBC radio comedy panel game. Billed as "the antidote to panel games", it consists of two teams of two comedians being given "silly things to do" by the host. The show was launched in April 1972 as a parody of ...

''. A 1976 variant where the first person to think of Finchley Central station loses has been suggested as a possible origin for The Game.

References

{{reflist

External links

* ''Manifold'' issue 3 (Spring 1969), Ian Stewart (editor), University of Warwic

Games of mental skill

See also

References

External links