Tiddlywinks in Phoenix in August

I swear I was trying to be good.  I had gone for my morning walk and was rushing home to meet a landscape guy who was going to give me an estimate for work on my backyard "slope from hell"...when much to my wandering eyes should appear...an estate sale sign.  I need more stuff like I need a hole in my head, but my car veered on its own, and what could I do but follow it?

Oh...my...goodness.  The previous owner of this house had a LOT of stuff.  I mean, a LOT of stuff.  A lot of which were bags and bags and bags and more bags of colorful plastic beads.  And that was just in the garage. 

Now plastic beads are not my thing...but when I saw these crazy funky berry-shaped beads I had to snap them up. 

Those and the weird ones that look like plastic discs that melted a little in the heat...kind of like a Tiddlywinks game that someone left in a car in Phoenix in August.   Now I'm obsessed with figuring out how old someone has to be to know about Tiddlywinks.  Do they still sell them?  Does anyone still play with them?  Did I actually play with them?  And how on earth did they come to be called Tiddlywinks? (See frightening note below, but don't say I didn't warn you.)

There are a LOT of them.  Hopefully I'll figure out what to use them for before someone buys them from MY estate sale.

Frightening note:  There is actually a World Tiddlywinks Championship Society.  Grown people flip little plastic disks. COMPETITIVELY.  Wow.  Sad news for fans of perennial favorites Sev & Ferd...they lost to Larry & Matt in a feverish battle for the crown.  Next year, Sev & Ferd, next year!  Meanwhile, let's pray no one puts an eye out by a scrunging cracker!

Even more frightening note:  the following words are real, live tiddlewink terms (care of Wikipedia).  Particularly disturbing is the "John Lennon Memorial Shot"...

Blitz: an attempt to pot all six winks of a player's colour early in the game

Bomb: to send a wink at a pile, usually from distance, in the hope of significantly disturbing it

Boondock: to free a squopped wink by sending it a long way away, leaving the squopping wink free in the battle area

Bristol: a shot which moves a pile of two or more winks as a single unit; the shot is played by holding the squidger at a right angle to its normal plane

Carnovsky (US)/Penhaligon (UK): potting a wink from the baseline (i.e., from 3 feet away)

Cracker: a simultaneous knock-off and squop, i.e. a shot which knocks one wink off the top of another while simultaneously squopping it

Crud: a forceful shot whose purpose is to destroy a pile completely

Good shot: named after John Good. The shot consists of playing a flat wink (one not involved in a pile) through a nearby pile with the intent of destroying the pile

Gromp: an attempt to jump a pile onto another wink (usually with the squidger held in a conventional rather than Bristol fashion)

John Lennon memorial shot: a simultaneous boondock and squop

Lunch: to pot a squopped wink (usually belonging to an opponent)

Scrunge (UK): to bounce out of the pot

Squidger: the disc used to shoot a wink

Squop: to play a wink so that it comes to rest above another wink

Sub: to play a wink so that it ends up (unintentionally) under another wink